“ ‘Cherlie Mackinnon from Dunure Ferm,’ says he to the man at the desk by way of introduction, ‘and I’ve been getting a wheen o’ letters from ye, so I thocht I’d best come and see you to straighten it aal oot.’ And he tipped the money oot o’ the poke onto the desk counter.
“ ‘Two hundred pound,’ he says: ‘and I think that should see us straight. So, if you’re happy wi’ that, I’ll be on my way back to the ferm’: and he headed for the street door.
“The clerk wass aal taken aback but he recovered himself enough to shout to Cherlie, ‘Wait a meenit Mr Mackinnon, I’ll have to give you a receipt for this money.’
“Cherlie wass almost in the street by this time but he stuck his head back round the door and said, ‘No, no, my mannie. You mustn’t do that! That’s cash — for peety’s sake, you’re neffer goin’ to pit that through the books, are ye?’
Para Handy shook his head sadly. “Poor Cherlie, the Income Tax people went into his affairs wi’ a most duvvelish ill-wull till he wass left with nothin’ but the breeks he stood up in, they took the ferm off him to pay what they said he owed, and that wass the end of the only chance of a puckle money that either the Mackinnons or the Macfarlanes effer had aboot them!
“It iss chust a pity that Cherlie didna have the natural sagiocity and deviousness of Hurricane Jeck, for likely he would have had the ferm yet!
“While Jeck had the happy knack of spendin’ money as if it grew on trees and aal he effer had to do wass chust wander oot and pick some more, he wass also pretty skilfull at keeping it oot of the hands of the Revenue and the Excise Officers.
“Wan time, when he wass wi’ the Allan Line, he had bought himself a smaall barrel of white spurit from a private enterprise still run by an acquaintance o’ his in Plantation, and installed it in the fore-cabin of the vessel he wass on. He wass a popular man wi’ his shupmates that trup, and his price for the gill wass very fair.
“When they put in at Halifax in Nova Scotia Jeck still had a mair than half-full barrel o’ illicit spurits in the fo’c’sle, and no intention at aal of surrendering it to the Canadian Excisemen, though he knew that they would be coming on board to search the shup. What he did wass, he got an empty whusky bottle from the Officer’s Mess and filled it wi’ watter that he coloured wi’ a wheen o’ burnt sugar so it looked like the real stuff.
“When the Excisemen came aboard and doon to the fo’c’sle — with the barrel of spurits lying on a trestle in the corner, quite openly, and wi’ a spigot at the fore-end of her — Jeck admutted straight away that he had some undeclared whisky that wass due for a surcharge.
“ ‘But chust the wan bottle, chentlemen,’ he said, producing the bottle o’ coloured watter from his locker, ‘and I wull gi’e ye a wee taste so ye can assess it yourselves for strength and cheneral cheerfulness, but ye’d better watter it doon a bit for it iss strong stuff!’ And did he no’ get two glesses, and pour a gill or thereby of the coloured watter into them, and then chust as cool ass you like wander over to the barrel o’ white spurits and fill the glesses up from the spigot! And the two Excisemen smacked their lips and said that yes, it wass a fine bottle of spurits, but there would be two dollars duty to pay, and when Jeck paid it they went off quite jocco, neffer for wan moment jalousing that there had been a barrel in the corner of the fore-cabin wi’ aboot 12 gallons of whusky in it!
“The only time that I effer heard of Jeck getting the worst of an encounter wi’ the Customs or the Excisemen wass when he came back to Liverpool on that same trup.
“The barrel of spurits wass near enough finished but Jeck wass dem’d if he was going to leave ony of it behind. So the morning they docked he got ootside as much of it as he possibly could.”
“And knowing Jack,” interposed the Mate, “I would imagine that was a pretty impressive intake.”
“Chust so,” agreed the Captain: “in fact that wass his undoing. When he’d taken what he could carry internally, ass you might say, there wass still about two bottles-worth of spurits left in the barrel so he got two empty bottles, filled them, wrapped them in two dirty shirts, rammed them into the legs of his rubber boots, and stuffed the boots into the very bottom of his dunnage-bag under a pile of jerseys and oilskins and the like.
“Then he hoisted the bag onto his shouthers, and off like a full-rigged ship to the Customs Shed. By the time he got there, what wi’ the fresh air and the amount of good spurits he had on board, for the first time in his life Jeck didna really know whether it was the Old New Year or a wet Thursday in Crarae.
“ ‘Have you onything to declare?’ asked the Customs man, poking the dunnage-bag Jeck had laid on the coonter.
“Jeck beamed on him with immense kindliness. ‘Have I onything to declare?’ says he, glowing with the greatest of goodwull to aal men, ‘yes indeed I have, but I am a sporting chentlemen and I will give you a chance to make some money on it.
“ ‘I’ll bet you a pound you canna find it!’
“Poor Jeck spent the rest o’ the day in some sort of a cells in the Customs-shed sobering up while they decided what to do with him, and he missed his train to Gleska.
“ ‘I tell you, Peter,’ he said to me later: ‘if the Government go on at the rate they’re goin’ now they wull run oot of things to tax! A chentleman iss not a free man in this country any more, he iss hounded for his money from wan day to the next.
“ ‘Where will it aal end? Aboot the only things they havna taxed yet are horses or bicycles to pay for the roads, or pianos or harmoniums in the hoose to pay for their entertainment value, or the watter in the teps. That would be the final insult — it’s bad enough paying tax on whusky, chust imagine if you had to pay tax on the watter to pit in it!’ ”
Para Handy got to his feet and stretched. “Anyway, the owner wull be taxing us for idling awa’ the day if we don’t make a start. And I dinna want to stert gettin’ broon unvelopes from him, apart from the wans wi’ the pey in them!”
FACTNOTE
The original idea for this story came not just from the firm conviction (held, I am sure, by many) that with only a very few exceptions buff-coloured envelopes are not worth the bother of opening them, but also from the very vivid memory of a postman who served an office in which I once worked — but wild horses will not make me reveal which town that was in!
He did indeed arrive with our mail one Christmas Eve, rather the worse for wear, and he did indeed partake of a dram or two at the party which was in full swing that day in what was otherwise a rather conformist place of work, and after leaving the office, he did indeed post the contents of his satchel in a handily-placed letter-box — and go home: via the pub.
The first Allan Line ship to cross the Atlantic from Greenock sailed from that port in 1819. She was a small brig, the Jean, but she was forerunner of the huge fleets of vessels which flew the Allan Line flag independently across the Atlantic for almost 100 years. Though Glasgow remained their head-office Allan Line ships also provided services across to North America from Liverpool and Le Havre. The business was bought over and amalgamated with Canadian Pacific in 1915.
Typical of the larger Allan ships to be seen on the Clyde in the first decade of this century was the Grampian, a 10,000 ton liner built by Stephens of Linthouse for the Canadian service. While undergoing a postwar refit at Antwerp she was virtually gutted by fire, handed over to the insurers, and finally broken up four years later in 1925.
I don’t know what it is about Customs at airports or seaports but it seems that even the most innocent person will suffer a harrowing guilt on the way through the Green Channel.
I always imagine that there is a large hand suspended in space above my head pointing unmistakeably in my direction, and I shiver yet at the recollection of coming through the Green Gate at Glasgow Airport when our family were kids, and the two of them looked up at me and shouted in piercing voices that seemed to echo round the hall for an eternity ‘Is this where they’re going to stop you and search you, Daddy?’
/> Para Handy would find it hard to believe that almost everything in sight is indeed taxed nowadays. They maybe haven’t taxed horses for using the roads — but they’ve hammered cars. And though pianos are, I think, still exempt, TVs have taken a bit of a beating.
God forbid that they should ever tax books!
A COMPANY AT CARRADALE — Just disembarked from the Kinloch are Campbeltown’s Boy’s Brigade unit, en route to their summer camp. Not ‘On His Majesty’s Service’ but seeing themselves as very much a serving and serviceable organisation, the movement was near its peak at this period and was a valued asset in the local community and a formative influence on youngsters from country and city alike.
47
All the Fun of the Fair
Tarbert Fair was in full swing and a great press of people was constantly moving hither and thither: along the shore road from the steamer pier to the inner harbour, where excitement at the finishing line of a rowing race was reaching fever pitch: from the inner harbour back to the steamer pier, to meet arrivals off the incoming Lord of the Isles: and from every direction to the centre of the town and out along the West Loch Tarbert road towards the showground and amusement park.
Finely turned-out open carriages accoutred in highly-polished brass and gleaming leather, their immaculate horses driven by a smartly-dressed coachman and occupied by young ladies in their brightest finery and twirling parasols, contrasted strongly (and strangely) with the carts in from the country — crammed with four generations of the same family, work-begrimed, drawn by a single patient Clydesdale. Poles apart in every regard but sharing the same excitement and sense of occasion on Tarbert’s annual big day.
Aboard the steam-lighter tucked into the innermost recess of the coal harbour, ablutions were in progress as her crew made ready to join in the excitement. She had berthed just an hour earlier, after a helter-skelter dash (or the nearest thing to a helter-skelter dash of which she was capable) from Carradale, where she had been discharging cement.
Macphail, still querulous and ill-tempered after the exertions he had been called upon to make in piling on the coal in a vain pursuit of the extra knots demanded by the Captain, was in the Vital Spark’s bows with a blunt safety razor and the ship’s mirror, scraping at his face with an expression of considerable concentration and periodic protests as he nicked his skin.
Captain and Mate shared the puffer’s ablutions bucket at the fore-end of the main hatch. Dougie, despite Para Handy’s caustic comments as to the superfluity of the gesture (given the almost total absence of hair upon his head) was shampooing vigorously, while his commander was using copious applications of soft-soap to rid his hands of a layer of caked-on cement.
Sunny Jim alone was ready for the fray. His melodeon lay at his feet as he stood on the after-end of the same hatch and amused himself (and several passers-by on the quayside) with a brisk display of step-dancing for which his whistling provided the only music.
“Will you lot get a move on,” he cried in exasparation a few minutes later, when he stopped to draw breath. “It’s a fair that’s on for wan day, no’ a fortnight, and besides for all the good you three auld fogeys are likely to get oot of it, ye’re a’ jist wastin’ yer time.”
Para Handy was on the point of retaliating caustically to these unkind remarks when there came the tuneless toot of a rather feeble ship’s whistle and another puffer appeared round the head of the jetty and drifted down towards the Vital Spark.
“Oh no,” said the Captain, swivelling round to inspect the new arrival, “oh no, for peety’s sake. It’s the Cherokee! I had raither hoped they had emigrated wi’ the Klondike men, but then I should have kent better. We’ll neffer be rid o’ Rab Gunn, the man’s like the proverbial bad penny.”
Gunn’s Cherokee was one of the few skipper-owned puffers to be encountered on the river, though in fact she spent most of her time on the Forth and Clyde and Monklands Canals, ferrying coals from the mines to the furnaces of the Lanarkshire steel mills, and finished iron and steel from there to the shipyards on the upper Clyde. That meant that, thankfully, her path only rarely crossed that of the Vital Spark.
The origins of the strained relations between the two skippers were lost in history, though Para Handy’s constant references to Gunn as a ‘lowland loon’ and that worthy’s dismissal of his rival as a ‘Hielan’ haddie’ did little to smooth the way to peace and harmony.
This antipathy extended to the two crews as well. Gunn’s Mate, Big Fergie, was an ox of a man with an arm like a side of beef and a temper on a short fuse, of whom gentle Dougie kept well clear. Morrison, the Engineer, was a mean-spirited man with a weakness for gambling and a reputation for cheating at cards while the Deckhand, known simply as Towser, was a swarthy young man with gold ear-rings and long, straggly hair.
“Ah’m amazed yon rust-bucket o’ yours is still afloat,” roared Gunn from his wheelhouse as the Cherokee eased her way into the berth immediately astern of the Vital Spark. “Ah heard she’d been hit and sunk by an oaring-boat aff Skelmorlie!”
“Iss that so,” said Para Handy huffily, hastily completing the last of his own toilet and hurrying to join his crew, who now stood waiting him on the quayside: “well, that chust shows you that you shouldna believe a word you hear in those disgraceful low-country shebeens you spend your days in!
“I am more than a little surprised to see you in Loch Fyne at aal, there’s no caall for coal-gabbarts up here. And besides wi’ your navigation abulities I didna think they let you loose outside the canals for even you canna get lost in there, aal you have to do is follow your nose. It’s different oot here on the real river. Are you sure you havna taken the wrong turn at the Garrioch Heid, are you no’ meant to be in Ayr right noo for a load of nutty slack from the mines aboot Cumnock?”
“Very cluvver,” riposted Gunn. “You are much too smart for your ain good, Macfarlane. I wuddna normally gi’e you the time o’ day aboot it, but jist to pit you in your place Ah’ll tell ye for nothin’ that the Cherokee is on her way tae Inveraray for a cairgo o’ baled wool frae the Argyll estates. Ah’m sure an’ you wush you could get a classy job like that but you’ve nae chance wi’ yon tarry old hooker o’ yours.”
Para Handy drew himself up with dignity. “Classy chob? You mean you caall shuftin’ a few bales of greasy wool a classy chob? We are off later tonight to the heid of the Loch to load a real classy cargo furst thing tomorrow at Cairndow! The cases and baggage of the biggest shooting perty of English chentlemen effer seen in Upper Loch Fyne. Tarry old hooker, indeed!”
And, turning away, he picked his way across the quayside — an operation which had to be undertaken with some care, as it was in the course of being resurfaced in places and stacks of cobblestones and low pyramids of roadstone had been deposited where repairs were being carried out.
The crew returned to the puffer at dusk, foot-weary but more than content with life after a splendid day at the Fair.
The Engineer’s years of shovelling coal had stood him in good stead at the Test-Your-Strength Stall and his mighty hammer blow had sent the wooden shuttle flying up the vertical post to ring the bell at the top with a reverberating, satisfying clang: and won him a bottle of whisky which, in the euphoria of his success, he had generously agreed would be shared with his colleagues.
Sunny Jim, relying on his nimble-footedness to see him through, had put himself forward at the Boxing Booth (to the horror of the pacifist Mate) and successfully survived three rounds against the promoter’s protégé, largely by virtue of running rapidly backwards round the ring, but had nonetheless qualified to win the half-crown on offer for the achievement, and used it to treat his shipmates at the Harbour Inn on their way back to the boat.
Even the lugubrious Dougie, cautiously investing his sixpence to enter the incense-filled tent of The Mystic Maharajah of Mysore, had emerged happily when that necromancer (actually an out-of-work riveter from Yorkhill) prognosticated nothing for him but future success and early promotion. For the ne
xt month or so he was on the lookout, whenever the Vital Spark was in port, for the arrival of the telegraph boy bringing news of his posting to his own command — till he gradually forgot the whole affair.
Para Handy had enjoyed a particularly satisfactory day, for he had early on made the happy discovery that two of his cousins were on the Fair ‘Committee’ and had spent a pleasant hour or so in that crowded and convivial tent enjoying the hospitality of the Fair’s organisers.
That happy atmosphere of universal goodwill was destroyed in an instant when the crew reached the edge of the quayside where the puffer had been moored.
There was no sign of her.
Para Handy blanched: “My Cot,” he said, ‘Issn’t this the bonnie calamity! The shup’s been stole on us! Whateffer wull the owner say!”
Sunny Jim caught hold of the Captain’s sleeve and tugged at it, pointing towards the stern of the Cherokee, where Rab Gunn sat on a coil of rope puffing contentedly at his pipe and looking on innocently.
“If ye’re looking for that rust-bucket of yours,” he said, “Ah think ye’ll find her over at the steamer pier. We jist left her there wance we’d finished wi’ her.
“You see, my boys decided to earn a penny or two from the towerists and we wisnae going to use wir ain boat, and spoil wir ain reputation. Wance the last steamer had left we set your tarry old hooker up as a sort of a floating funfair and gave them free trups roond the bay. But we made a fortune aff the entertainment! Big Fergie carried on a Boxing Prize Match doon in the hold and though wan fella caught him wi’ a lucky poke in the eye for the rest o’ the time he jist plain murdered them, it wis like takin’ toffee aff af a bairn. Morrison ran a school o’ Find-the-Lady on the foredeck and Towser wrapped himself in a couple o’ blankets and did the genuine Gypsy Rose Lee in the fo’c’sle. We took in near on four pund, and the lads are aff to spend their share.
“Ah’m just staying on board to keep an eye on the shup, for Ah ken whit you Hielan’ stots can be like when your temper’s up!”
Complete New Tales of Para Handy Page 35