And with a sarcastic, satisfied laugh he stood up, stretched luxuriously, and made his way along the deck and down the hatch of the fo’c’sle.
Para Handy, dejected and at a loss for words, shook his head sadly and, motioning the crew to follow him, set off on the half-mile walk round to the steamer pier.
Once again, Sunny Jim caught him by the sleeve and pointed, but this time towards the assorted building materials which had been left on the quayside overnight by the construction gang.
“Captain,” he whispered urgently, “is that no’ a tar-biler over there? And iss that no a length of hose connected tae it, wi’ a handpump on the side of the biler?”
“Aye,” said the Captain, “what of it?”
“Well,” said Jim “D’ye no’ think, if someone were to tip-toe aboard the Cherokee wi’ the end of yon hose while Gunn’s asleep and before his crew get back from the Inns, and slide aside jist wan plank on the hatch, that we’d have a fine chance to get back at them…?”
Sharing the contents of Macphail’s bottle of spirits in their thick tea-mugs was a welcome bonus, but the crew were in high spirits (for very different reasons) as the Vital Spark chugged out into Loch Fyne half-an-hour later and set her course for a moonlight run north to Cairndow.
“I chust wush,” said the Captain, “that I could be in Inveraray tomorrow morning to see Gunn’s face when they open the hatches to take that cargo of wool on board.
“Some chance! Not with three inches or more of liquid tar lying on the floor of the hold. That was a sublime notion of yours, Jum, chust sublime. There iss no getting away from it. I could wish though that there had been more tar in the biler than that but at least it will give them something to think aboot.
“There’s no doot at aal now as to which shup is the tarry old hooker now, eh, boys? Gunn’ll no’ shout that at the Vital Spark again in a hurry!”
FACTNOTE
The second Lord of the Isles featured in my first collection of Para Handy stories. Launched from D & W Henderson’s Meadowside Yard in 1891, she was an acclaimed and handsome ship which in no way could eclipse the Columbia, but which ran her close in terms of public loyalty and affection, and could almost — but not quite — match her for speed.
The Captain’s reference to the Klondike has, of course, nothing to do with the operations and practices of the rusting and battered fish-processing factory ships which have followed the herring fleets round Scotland in recent decades, but everything to do with the great Canadian Gold Rush of 1897.
Only the Californian bonanza of the late 1840s exceeded the Klondike for madness and mayhem, but of course that was located in a (slightly) more accessible and (certainly) more amenable environment. And lasted just a little longer: the Klondike was over and done with in less than four years.
The Klondike River in the Arctic North-West of Canada, on that country’s border with Alaska, came to public notice when gold was discovered in its creeks and those of its tributaries. Both the climate and the terrain were implacably hostile. Wintertime temperatures fell to 50 degrees below centigrade and the area of the strike could only be reached with the very greatest of difficulty, either up the Yukon river or by way of treacherous mountain passes from Alaska.
Yet despite those almost insurmountable hazards nearly 30,000 prospectors and camp-followers streamed into the area. Shanty towns sprang up overnight. In all probability the owners of the saloons and brothels did rather better out of the ‘strike’ than did any of the miners. Dawson City, the self-created ‘capital’ of the gold fever country, reached a peak population of about 20,000. Only about 300 households remain there today.
The country fairs which criss-crossed Scotland on their travels were the eagerly awaited event of the year in many of the most isolated communities and their ‘attractions’ did indeed include the notorious boxing-booths to which any local aspirants of the ‘noble art’ were lured (to provide entertainment for a paying audience) by the promise of a shilling or two if they could last a round — or three rounds, depending on the generosity of the proprietor — against the veteran thugs who were the stockin-trade of the whole enterprise.
Cairndow Church, at the northern arm of Loch Fyne, has a unique octagonal parish kirk, built in 1820, which attracts visitors year round. The loch itself at this point is now heavy with the cages of salmon-farms.
ROLL UP, ROLL UP! — The annual Fair or Show was the highlight of the summer for many isolated Argyllshire towns and villages, and here the McGrory brothers have captured some of the atmosphere of those occasions. To the left, the tall post of the ‘Ring-the-Bell’ test of strength towers above the twin booths of conjurers, and to their right, catching the attention of the passers-by, is a boxing booth, the gloves for unwary challengers hanging from poles across its frontage.
48
Cafe Society
Mrs Macfarlane looked appraisingly at her husband over the rim of her breakfast tea-cup and came to a decision about something which she had been mulling over in her mind for some days.
“Peter,” she said firmly, “I think it is high time that I invited Mrs Macphail and Mrs Campbell to tea. You spend most of your life with their husbands yet I’ve only met them once, very briefly, at our wedding. And,” she added with a smile, “since I had a lot of more important things on my mind that day, I don’t think I gave them the attention they deserved. It would be nice to get to know them a little better.”
Para Handy grimaced.
“I am not sure that that iss such a good idea, Mery,” he said hesitantly, picking his words as carefully as he could. “Effer since we got merried I have made a point of keeping my home life quite separate from the shup. Besides, the three of you mightna get on, and that could strain relations between the menfolk, and it’s herd enough ass it is bein’ cuvil to Dan when the moods iss on him, or copin’ wi’ wan of Dougie’s tirravees if he’s had a bad weekend at hame.”
Mrs Macfarlane bridled.
“Are you suggesting that I am difficult to get on with?”
“Not at aal, Mery,” he said hastily. “You are sublime, chust sublime, and the wumman that couldna get on with you would be a sorry case indeed.”
And so the necessary arrangements were made and, the following Thursday, when their men were buffeting through a March gale in the Sound of Mull, the three ladies took a lavish tea together at Mrs Macfarlane’s neat flat on the second floor of a trim red sandstone tenement, just off Byres Road, which boasted a quite astonishing wally close showing an unmistakable influence of the Orient in its design and colours.
The Captain’s menage was accounted by the two visitors to be a most desirable and beautifully furbished apartment and was much admired, although in the course of conversation Mrs Campbell remarked that she understood, from what she had read in the papers, that electric lighting was about to be made generally available in that part of the city: and perhaps Mrs Macfarlane could persuade the Captain to make the necessary investment to add its advantages to the many the house already possessed. And Mrs Macfarlane agreed that this would indeed be a subject worth broaching with her husband.
The three ladies got on famously, and their cosy tete-a-tete in the Macfarlane menage was soon followed by a return invitation to Annie Macphail’s Plantation home, where over an even more lavish tea a quite exhaustive discussion took place on the merits or otherwise of being domiciled so close to the river with its riveters and hooters and fog: above all, fog: with the balance of opinion finally coming to the conclusion that King’s Park and its environs (to take just one example) was, really, quite close enough: and that Mrs Macphail would have to have a word with Dan on that very subject at some suitable occasion in the near future.
The ladies met two weeks later at Lisa Campbell’s many-bedded pied-a-terre in Ibrox. The day was carefully planned by their hostess who succeeded in emptying the house of its 12 noisy siblings for the two hours duration of the tea-party by giving them each a jelly-piece and a penny for their fares and sending t
hem on the long, slow tram-trip from Paisley Road West out to Airdrie, and back.
It was a ruse that had saved her sanity before this, and it did not let her down that afternoon. Nor did her catering, for she served a tea even more sumptuous than those proferred at Byres Road and Plantation, conscious that she was entertaining the widow of a baker who would have high standards in that department.
Once more the conversation ranged widely. Mrs Macphail, who was herself one of a large family of five brothers and four sisters and came originally from Bowling, stressed the great value of a house (be it ever so humble a house) somewhere in the country and with a garden of its own, when it came to allowing parents the luxury of a little peace and privacy from the noisy demands of their numerous offspring. Impressed, Mrs Campbell concurred with the Captain’s wife’s proposal that she really should speak to Dougie about the problem and canvass his opinion as to the feasibility of a move when he returned that night from Bowling.
So pleasant had these meetings been for the ladies that nobody thought to call a halt now that the wheel had come full circle, as it were. Indeed Mrs Macfarlane, who was now planning to be hostess a second time, hit upon a novel and really quite exciting idea in relation to their next get-together, and began to make preparations for it.
The Captain was home for the whole of the following weekend and there was a subject which he must — reluctantly — broach with his wife.
Reluctantly because he genuinely hated to do or say anything to upset her in any way at all: but reluctantly also because for all her aura of gentle kindness and unstinting affection, Mrs Macfarlane could, when roused, be found to have considerable backbone when it came to defending her position and her rights as a woman.
“Mery,” he said, tentatively, when the dishes had been cleared away from the tea-table and the two sat quietly at their ease on either side of the parlour fire, “are you planning to have ony more o’ these tea-pairties wi’ Dan’s and Dougie’s wives?”
“Why, certainly,” his wife replied, brightly: “such charming ladies, and we do seem to have so much in common — apart from our husbands being shipmates. We really look forward to meeting and I am planning something rather special for next time.”
Para Handy scuffled his slippers on the rug. “Weel, Mery, it iss like this. The laads are upset aboot some o’ the things you have aal been talking aboot, and the way they are now being nagged at aboot it aal.”
Mrs Macfarlane bridled. “I am sure I do not know what you mean, Peter.”
“It iss this business of hooses, the three of you agreein’ that I should be puttin’ in the electric for a stert: I am not made of money, you know that fine.
“And that Dan should mak’ a move to get awa’ from the ruver chust because it’s foggier there than up at Hyndland or Gilmorehill. I neffer heard such umpident nonsense. Dan likes the ruver, he wis born and brought up on the ruver and he’s no more intention of leavin’ it than of emigrating to Canada. If Dougie wass here he would tell you himself. Forbye, Annie Macphail was perfectly content wi’ their wee hoose there till you and Lisa Campbell got sterted on her.
“And then you are tryin’ to get poor Dougie to move awa’ frae Ibrox! Dougie canna staun’ the country! The laad was brought up in Cowal, for peety’s sake, and he saw mair rain in the first ten years of his life than maist men see in their three-score and ten. As he says, at least in the city there’s aye somewhere fine and handy to tak’ shelter if the heavens open, and usually somewhere that you can find some company to pass the day wi’ and get a gless in your haund at the same time.”
Mrs Macfarlane gave her husband a steely look.
“If we wasn’t meant to try and better ourselves,” she said with conviction, “the good Lord would not have given us ambition! If you had not had any ambition you would still have been a deckie on a gabbart.”
“That iss not the same at aal,” countered her husband. “It iss in the nature of a man to mak’ the best he can of his career for the sake of his faimily but it iss neffer the place of the faimily to try to change his character, and that iss what the three of you are daein’. Dan would be lost away from the ruver and Dougie would be right oot of place oot o’ the toon and if the three of you cairry on like this there wull be no Vital Spark and no crew for we’ll be at opposite ends o’ the country. Forbye, you wouldna like to be put to live somewhere you wassna comfortable wi’ yourself, Mery. You wouldna want change chust for the sake of it.”
“Nonsense,” said Mrs Macfarlane sharply, “for a start I moved here from Campbeltown without making a fuss about it when we got married. It is a matter of adjusting and making the best of the circumstances wherever you find yourself, not complaining when there is nothing to complain about. Annie and Lisa have my full support.”
And she retired, frostily, to iron the Captain’s shirts in the kitchen ready for his departure the following morning.
When Para Handy returned from an eight day trip to Islay and Jura, he found his wife in subdued mood.
“What ails you, Mery?” he asked anxiously as she greeted him at the door absent-mindedly, and turned away without proferring her cheek for a kiss.
She shook her head.
“Now, now,” said the Captain. “Something’s wrong. What have I done — or not done?”
“Oh, it’s not you, Peter,” she said at length, sitting on the arm of her chair in the parlour, “it’s me. You were right about our tea-parties. We went about them all wrong, trying to outdo each other with the baking and the accessories and then trying to improve the poor woman’s house that we were in. Well, we have all learned our lessons.
“This week was my turn to have Lisa and Annie round, but I had the notion to take them up town for a fancy afternoon spree and we went to Miss Cranston’s Room de Luxe in Sauchiehall Street.”
She shuddered at the memory.
“I have never been so embarrassed in my life! I knew I had made a mistake from the moment we went through the door!
“The place was full of nothing but society ladies from places like Bearsden or Whitecraigs or Eastwood or Milngavie. There were more fur-coats hanging on the racks at the door than you would find running about in a zoo, and as for the hats!” — she shook her head in disbelief — “the hats! Lisa and Annie and I felt quite out of place among all that finery, for all that we were dressed in what we thought was our own.”
Para Handy nodded sympathetically. “It iss chust what I have been trying to tell you, Mery: let us be happy with what we have and with where we were meant to be.”
“But it got worse,” said his wife, “the waitress that came to serve at our table was a Campbeltown woman I had been at school with and she recognised me, I could see that: but she pretended she did not, and ignored us as much as she could, and spilled the tea on the tablecloth when she put the pot down, and never brought us fresh hot water, or offered us extra cakes, the way she did at all the other tables.
“And when the bill came, I did not have enough money to pay it it was so huge, and had to ask Lisa and Annie to help out.
“I have never been so ashamed and angry all at the same time.”
“And I am sure you neffer looked bonnier either,” said Para Handy with some fervour, and comforted her, “for when the colour comes to your cheeks when you are upset or cross, there is not a prettier gyurl in aal Scotland. And besides, you were never out of place in there, you are a finer lady than aal the toffs o’ Gleska pit together, and I am proud to be your man.”
At which Mrs Macfarlane blushed most becomingly, and clapped her husband gently on the shoulder.
“Keep your teas wi’ the other wives by aal means, Mery, for it iss good that you are all frien’s. But neffer try to change the way the world is, and certainly leave well alane wi’ the way we are, and Dougie iss, and Dan.
“We’re aal Jock Tamson’s bairns on the shup, and on shore, and that’s the way we want it to be — and nobody is goin’ to alter that — not even our wives!”
FA
CTNOTE
Of the ladies of the three senior members of the crew only Para Handy’s wife Mary makes more than a fleeting appearance. There is just one brief veiled reference to Dan Macphail’s domestic circumstances, though Dougie’s wife makes her mark (in The Mate’s Wife, one of the earliest of the original stories) when she turns up at Innellan pier on pay-day to collect the Mate’s wages, ‘with her door-key in her hand, the same ass if it wass a pistol to put at his heid’.
Para Handy tells us that she is down on the first steamer from Glasgow any Saturday that the puffer is inside Ardlamont (the outer margin of the Kyles of Bute) so she is not a lady to be taken lightly and certainly not one to whom one would willingly take home an opened pay-packet.
To introduce the three ladies to each other was a temptation impossible to resist.
Glasgow had certain catering institutions, including among their number the venue chosen by Mrs Macfarlane for the ladies’ afternoon tea, which were unique to the city, or so at least it seemed, and which though they had their origins at the turn of the century, lived on into the second half.
For serious eating, whether of lunches or high teas, a Scottish speciality rarely encountered nowadays, there were the three restaurant businesses founded and operated by three redoubtable ladies, whose names were almost always given in full when their establishments were being referred to. These were the respected restaurants run by Miss Cranston, Miss Buick and Miss Rombach and though targeted at the middle to upper class family market they were also very popular lunchtime venues for Glaswegian businessmen.
A second, distinctive, Glasgow institution was the basement coffee-house, very much the preserve of the male, and the haunt of the lawyers, accountants and merchants who made up so much of the middle-class commercial backbone of the city centre. The chain of tobacco-shops owned by Mr George Murray Frame had in their depths a dark, wood-panelled, dimly-lit subterranean room redolent of coffee and tobacco smoke and crammed full in mid-morning (and most other times of the day) of men in dark suits, whose dark topcoats and bowler hats festooned the wooden hallstands at the foot of the stairs which led down from the shop above.
Complete New Tales of Para Handy Page 36