Complete New Tales of Para Handy (15 page)

“Wan time we came into a jetty in Islay late one evening ready to load up a cargo of the very best malt spurits in cask the following mornin'.

“Well, they thocht they had the better of Jeck this time. The distillery had already waggoned the casks down to the pier, and they'd put an eight foot high wire and metal-framed fence not chust at the landward end, but right roond the other three sides of it: and they'd two security guards inside it, sittin' on top of the stacks of casks.

“ ‘Let's see ye get somethin' oot o' that, MacLachlan,' said the heid Customs man wi' a smug grin. Jeck said nothin', but chust shook his head sadly.

“At two o'clock in the mornin', when the tide was fully out and the
Mingulay
was dwarfed by the jetty now rising high above her hull, Jeck shook me awake.

“ ‘Come on Peter, let's get oor share o' the spurits!'

“ ‘You're no' canny, Jeck,' says I. ‘We'll get nothin' here. The spurits iss all fenced in and the guards iss still awake for I can hear them talking.'

“ ‘So much the better,' says he: ‘the more noise they make, the easier for us.'

“And would you believe it, he produced an empty barrel and a big brace-and-bit. We climbed over the puffer's bulwarks onto the horizontal trusses on the framework of the jetty and worked the barrel till it wass under wan o' the gaps between the planks that made up the surface of the pier, right at the very middle of it. Then Jeck used the gap to drill a hole into the base o' wan o' the whusky casks from below, and ass the spurits poured oot he caught them in the barrel we'd brought with us.

“It wass much harder to get the full barrel back on board the boat — but we managed it efter a bit o' a struggle.

“Next morning we loaded the cargo on board in netting slings, the Customs men roped and sealed the hatches tight, and it wass long efter we'd unloaded in Gleska before the empty cask wass discovered. By that time it wass too late to blame anyone, and the Customs people finally decided it must have been liberated by someone at the blenders. They never jaloused that it would have been possible for Jeck and me to do what we did.”

“What I don't understand,” said Sunny Jim, “is where you got the empty barrel from — and where you hid it on board?”

Para Handy grinned. “Well, Jum, let's say that we didn't drink any tea on the way hame from Islay, long trup though it was. We had chust used the
Mingulay's
own water-barrel for the chob!”

“Happy days and high-jinks,” said Jim a little despondently. “I wish we could enjoy some o' that sort of spree these days, but with these foxy Customs men that's jist a daydream.”

Para Handy stood up from where he'd been sitting, hunched on the corner of the cargo hatch.

He looked round to ensure no unwanted ears were within eavesdropping range.

“What were you planning for supper the night, Jum?” he asked.

“Salt herring, I thocht,” said Sunny Jim.

The captain grimaced.

“No, Jum, for peety's sake no. Naethin' salty, whatever you do. Naethin' to provoke a thirst. And, a word of advice — don't be tempted to drink ony of oor ain watter.” He nodded towards the wooden waterbreaker lashed to the mast.

Sunny Jim stared in disbelief. “You don't mean…?”

Para Handy laid a forefinger against the side of his nose. “But how on earth…?” Sunny Jim began.

“Wheesht, Jum,” said the skipper anxiously. “Wheesht. That's for me to know: and for them neffer to find oot!” And he turned and waved to the three Customs men standing in animated conversation on the quayside.

F
ACTNOTE

Many puffers called upon to transport whisky really did regard the operation as something of a challenge to their ingenuity and all of the subterfuges described in this tale were actually employed at one time or another by different crews!

There are about 100 whisky distilleries in Scotland today, a far cry from earlier days before rationalisation, take-over and the economies of scale saw mergers and buy-outs which decimated the numbers of individual enterprises. In Para Handy's time there were more than 20 distilleries in Campbeltown alone!

The majority of whisky is used for blending, with whiskies from a variety of other distilleries, to create the best-known proprietary brands. The blender's art is the most highly prized of skills, and the secret of the blending processes jealously guarded.

Only a minority of distilleries produce a whisky which will be bottled and marketed as a ‘single': that is, unblended with the product of other manufacturers. Almost without exception those whiskies which are branded and sold as singles are malt whiskies, distilled from malted barley in copper pot stills, rather than grain whiskies which are the chief ingredient of the blends, made from maize and unmalted barley in a continuous distillation process.

T
HE
A
GONY AND THE
E
CSTASY
— Two puffers waiting at the Caol Ila Distillery pier, Islay, for the most frustrating cargo in the world — casks of malt whisky straight from the bond. Though this photograph dates from the 1940s, the agony of proximity to such temptation (and the ecstasy of the generous dram which was the crew's expected bonus from the manager) were the same then as they had been 40 years previously.

The character and quality of the familiar commercial blends is generally dictated partly by the quantity, but above all by the quality, of the malt whiskies which they contain.

As a rule of thumb, grain whisky is bland but malt whiskies are full-flavoured: most important of all, each malt has its own unique character which the experiment of centuries has proved impossible to duplicate. On Speyside, the major centre of malt whisky production, adjacent distilleries drawing their water from the same river and buying their barley from the same grower will produce totally different whiskies. And nobody knows why.

Some of the finest singles would have been as familiar to Para Handy as they are to the whisky connoisseurs of today — like the world-renowned Islay malts, product of that fertile island lying west of the Kintyre peninsula. They are among the very greatest, the most distinctive (and, for many English or overseas visitors anxious to sample them in public house or off-licence, among the most unpronounceable) names in whisky lore and legend.

Lagavulin. Laphroaig. Bruichladdich. Bunnahabhain.

Names to conjure with!

13

Things to Come

T
he whole of Arran seemed to be asleep this Saturday afternoon in August. An air of somnolence as heavy as the unexpected heatwave, now entering its second week, hung across the island and Brodick pier was deserted, but for a solitary black-hulled puffer lying, empty of any cargo, against its inner face.

A line of washing stretched from a hook on the forward face of the wheelhouse to the mast of the
Vital Spark
and water dripped spasmodically onto the tarpaulin covering her hold. As befitted a vessel on which all men were “chust Jock Tamson's bairns, wan effery bit as good as the next” as her Captain put it, it was a very democratic line on which Para Handy's best jersey jostled for space with Macphail's socks, these latter having more holes in them than a gruyere cheese.

From the fo'c'sle chimney a thin column of smoke drifted upward and in the bows of the puffer Sunny Jim was rinsing the crew's dinner-plates in a bucket of sea-water. Replete with herring and potatos, the three other members of the ship's company sat on upturned fishing-boxes on the pier with mugs of thick sweet tea, and contemplated the view in companionable silence.

“There is nothin' in the world beats the Clyde,” said Para Handy conclusively, “when the weather is in the right trum! You could not ask for a finer sight than Brodick Bay and the Goat Fell on an efternoon like this! You could be sellin' tickets to towerists chust for a look at the view!”

Macphail snorted. “Towerists is wantin' mair than jist a view nooadays,” he said. “Wi' them it's all go! Jist look at whit's happened in Bute! Tram-caurs, an' sweemin' baths, an' concert halls, an' baun'staun's, an' gowf, an' boats an' yats tae hire, an' an aqua room.”

“Aquarium,” corrected Sunny Jim, as he clambered up the ladder and onto the pier.

“Or whatever,” conceded the engineer, “but Ah'm sure it gi'es a richt fleg tae veesitors: there's plenty Glesga fowk think a fush is somethin' only tae be foond in cans, they dinna realise it's a wild animal that swums aboot in the watter jist as free as a burd!

“And besides, if it's scenery ye're wantin', Scotland's got a long way to go to be upsides on some o' the places Ah've seen when I went foreign.” Macphail's much-aired experience of the world was at once an irritation and a challenge to the crew and in particular the Captain, who never knew whether to give total credence to the engineer's pronouncements in that area. Indeed Hurricane Jack had, on occasion, been known to hint darkly that he for one didn't believe the engineer had ever been furth of the Irish Sea.

“I wouldna be sure on that, Dan,” offered the Mate who, though normally of a peaceful not to say diffident disposition, took umbrage at any criticism — whether direct or implied — of his West Highland homeland. “You would go far to find a finer sight than the view from Oban of a sunset over Mull.”

“Or Brodick and Goatfell,” repeated Para Handy.

“Mull! Goatfell! Ye've nae idea o' the world, neither the pair o' ye. If ye'd seen Capetoon an' Table Moontain, or New York an' the Statue o' Luberty, or Rio de Janwario and the Sugar Lump, ye'd no' be blawin' aboot yer ain kail-yerd.”

“Rio,” mused the Captain. “Jeck wass there wance: he said it wass awful over-crooded wi' foreigners o' every description and neffer a wan o' them spoke a word o' English and there wassna a dacent gless of whusky to be had! He thocht New York wass chust much aboot the same, for none o' the Americans he met could speak much English either!

“Go to ony o' those places indeed! I'd ass soon go to — iss it Spain? — onyway, where aal the Onion Chonnies come from, chust aal garlic and chokers and berets and bicycles! No: we are Brutain's hardy sons, livin' in the land o' the free, here we are and here we stay!”

“Man, Captain, you're jist a richt stick-in-the-mud,” protested Sunny Jim. “Whit way d'ye think Brutain got the Empire in the first place? It wisnae thanks to auld fogeys that widnae stir frae their ain firesides. If it had been left up tae the likes o' you, we widnae ha'e colonised the Cumbraes yet!”

The topic came up again the following week as the puffer lay at Inveraray waiting for its cargo of oak-bark to be carted down from Glenshira.

Captain and crew were seated on deck enjoying the last of the evening sunshine, and studying the latest crop of Inveraray tourists with covert interest, in continuing good weather. The fine spell, indeed, had now lasted so long that local worthies seated on benches outside the Inns with a schooner of beer were talking of record temperatures, and local farmers nursing a whisky at the bar were complaining endlessly to anyone who was prepared to listen about the lack of rain.

It did seem, however, as if the weather might be on the change for the clouds were gathering over the hills at the head of Glenaray, and the drivers of tourist charabancs waiting on the seafront were rigging their canvas awnings — just in case.

Among the full house of summer visitors staying at the Argyll Arms Hotel, which stood within sight of the pier, and just across the road from the driveway leading to the impressive castle seat of the Dukes of Argyll, was an American family comprising father, mother — and two very slender, very tall and very blonde daughters in their early twenties.

The parents were a conspicuous addition to the attractions of Inveraray with their — by the standards of that douce Highland town — garish and unfamiliar clothes, nasal conversation never delivered at any level under a shout, and a predilection for hiring boats or carriages at the drop of a hat and tipping with a reckless generosity that had the townspeople lost for words.