Complete New Tales of Para Handy (19 page)

“It's naethin' to do wi' me, Mr McSporran,” said the Tarbert policeman to whom the piermaster had appealed for help. “The boats iss chust berthed: they're no' breaking ony law that I'm aware of.”

At nine o'clock, with the
Duchess of Fife
due in just 15 minutes, he admitted defeat.

The waiting conveyances were moved round to the only available berth in the harbour.

The coal pier.

From their vantage point on a hill above the town, the crews of the five puffers watched with some considerable relish as the chartered paddler approached the steamer pier, her captain plainly in ill-humour as he leaned from the wing of the bridge to hear a shouted apology from McSporran, and his instructions about berthing against the tiny, grimy puffer quay.

They watched the dozens of gentry on their way to Islay pick their way down the gangways and across the littered, coal-rimed jetty towards the waiting carriages.

They watched the retinues of servants who followed with all the massed paraphernalia of an Edwardian shooting-party at its grandest.

And, above all, they watched the mortification, embarrassment and humiliation of the snobbiest piermaster on the whole of the Firth.

“Weel, that's set his gas at a peep” said Hurricane Jack with some satisfaction. “I think it'll be some time afore McSporran kicks the
Tuscan
— or any ither puffer come tae that — from its berth again!”

F
ACTNOTE

The Glasgow to Ardrishaig service was jealously guarded and promoted by David MacBrayne as the paramount Clyde route, as indeed it was. An end in itself for round-trip passengers on a day excursion, it was much more than that. It was the major water-borne through-route to the Western and Northern Highlands and Islands and many of its patrons were the wealthy landowners and gentry (and their guests) who lived most of the year in city homes — in London as often as Glasgow — but spent much of the summer months on the Highland estates.

T
HE
O
VERLAND
C
ONNECTION
— Although the town was very much the crossroads for passengers going west and north, there never were any scheduled steamer services from Tarbert to Campbeltown and intending passengers faced an uncomfortable, clattering coach journey over much of the length of the Kintyre peninsula. The 40-mile trip would have taken almost a whole day by horse-drawn omnibus. The first motor buses appeared in the area in 1907 — needless to say in MacBrayne livery!

It truly was an express service. Despite requiring to make nine intermediate stops,
Columba
reached Tarbert after a 90-mile passage from Glasgow in less than five hours and arrived at her terminus and turning point, Ardrishaig, 40 minutes later.

Those bound for Islay or Jura disembarked at Tarbert while those headed further North or West — to Oban or Mull, Inverness or Skye — stayed on board till Ardrishaig and then transferred to the Crinan Canal packet.

The dovetailing with MacBrayne's West Highland fleets meant that a passenger leaving London on the overnight train could be in Islay in time for tea the next afternoon, a time-scale only possible today by air. Those travelling north from Ardrishaig could reach Oban for high tea, Fort William for dinner.

Excursionists were an increasingly important market and it can be said that David MacBrayne almost invented the concept of the inclusive tour — and assiduously promoted it. The full day trip from Glasgow to Ardrishaig and return cost in 1899 only 12/- (60p!) in first class and 7/-(35p) in second: both inclusive of a meals package consisting of breakfast, lunch and tea!

Demand on the route was such that as well as
Columba's
daily service there was an additional sailing in the peak months by her consort
Iona
, which left Glasgow at 1.30 p.m. and reached Ardrishaig at 7.15: here she lay overnight before returning to Glasgow first thing the following morning.

Sadly, there were harbours where the puffers and their ilk were treated very much as poor relations, with their own designated berths in some hidden corner, and with officials anxious to keep the main pier as the preserve of the steamers, the yachts and the occasional scheduled cargo service.

One has the distinct impression that Para Handy and his crew were always happier in the smaller communities where they were assured of a warm welcome at any time of the year!

16

The March of the Women

P
ara Handy consulted the tin alarm clock which hung on a string from a nail driven into the fo'c'sle bulkhead. “Nearly six o'clock: Jeck iss late,” he announced. It was a Saturday afternoon in August and the
Vital Spark
was lying at Anderston Quay, loaded to the plimsoll line with steel plates for the shipyard at Campbeltown.

She was ready to sail and, indeed, Para Handy had planned to be half way to Greenock by this time. But Hurricane Jack, learning on their arrival in Glasgow the previous evening that his old command — the clipper
Port Jackson
— was docked at Leith, had taken the train to Edinburgh then and there to see his former colleagues, with the promise to return by early afternoon the following day.

“Ye cannae trust that man at all,” said Macphail with some asperity, “he's a mountebank! We've missed the tide noo and we micht as weel wait till the morn'.”

Before the Captain could leap to the defence of his oldest friend there came the clatter of boots on the deck overhead and the man himself came bursting down into the fo'c'sle.

“Sorry, shipmates,” he said, “but it's chust been wan o' those days and my head's aal spinnin' wi' the stramash of it aal.”

“Wass it a heavy night wi' your friends, then, Jeck?” asked the Captain solicitously. “Jum will run up to the dairy and get a bottle o' milk to settle you.”

“It iss not last night that is the problem,” replied Jack with great vehemence, “and my head iss fine, thank you.

“No, I got back to Glasgow as planned, just before dinner time. The trouble started when I came oot o' Queen Street Station.”

“Trouble?” Dougie put in anxiously. “What trouble?”

“He'll hae met a friend that owed him and they've been on the ran-dan for the last five hoors,” chipped in the Engineer with rancour.

“Pay no attention, Jeck,” soothed Para Handy. “Chust tak' your time and tell us exactly what went wrong and where, and whether you want anything done about it.”

“George Square, my boys,” said Jack, “that's where it's aal happening: but nothing went wrong! Everything went right! When I came doon the steps from the Station, the Square was chust packed wi' wummin: nothin' but wummin and gyurls ass far ass the eye could see!

“There wass some sort of a wudden platform put up at the far end o' the square, chust in front o' the Toon Hall, and there wass a wheen o' older wummin stood on it, wi' wan o' them aye rantin' on aboot somethin'. I wisna' much carin', so I paid no attention to yon.

“But aal the pavements at the station end o' the square wass chust choc-a-bloc wi' gyurls: red-heads and brunettes and fair haired gyurls that would stop a tram in its trecks they wass that bonnie.” He sighed with pleasure at the memory. “Dozens o' them! Hundreds o' them! I have never in aal my life seen sich a tempting array o' feminine beauty aal in the wan place at the wan time!”

Macphail the misogynist snorted: “And Ah'm sure you made their day too, and they wis jist speechless wi' excitement at seein' you,” he said dismissively, “bein' the fine figure o' a man you maybe used tae be — aboot 20 years ago. Your courtin' days is done, Maclachlan, and it's high time you admutted it and acted your age!”

“Pay no attention, Jeck,” said the Captain. “He is chust jealous. Go on! Who were they aal?”

“Suffry-jets,” said Jack. “Ye'll have read aboot them. Gyurls and wummin wantin' the vote.”

“Wantin' the vote?” said Sunny Jim incredulously. “Whitever will they think o' next. Votes for wummin? Fat chance!”

That dyed-in-the-wool anti-feminist, the Engineer, nodded in vigorous agreement.

“Well, I don't know,” began the Mate, who was notoriously (and unceasingly) henpecked. “Maybe they have a point…”

“When are you goin' tae hae the courage tae start wearin' the breeks in your ain hoose?” demanded Macphail truculently and it was only the Captain's timely intervention that prevented a trading of insults between the two.

“Go on Jeck,” he repeated firmly: “and tell us aal aboot these suffry-jets.”

The suffragette movement, till now largely directed towards the thinking women of the London area, had embarked on promoting a more national support, and Hurricane Jack had by chance debouched onto George Square in the midst of their first ever rally in Glasgow. There had been a considerable degree of local interest generated by the placing of a series of advertisements in local papers, bills posted everywhere proclaiming the place and time of the event, and a discreet but fervent word-of-mouth campaign.

Holding the rally on a Saturday had been something of a stroke of genius since it made it possible for the factory girls of Glasgow to attend in droves, alongside the middle-class women who had been the main target of much suffragette proselytising till then.

While most of the Glaswegian males who came upon the scene passed by, as it were, very firmly indeed on the other side, it was not in Jack's character as a devoted ladies' man of many decades devotion to pass up the opportunity to mingle with such a vast number of members of the opposite sex.

So, setting his cap at a jaunty angle, and regretting bitterly that he lacked a brass-mounted telescope tucked authoritatively under one arm, he had infiltrated the crowds of young girls on the square opposite the station.

After so many rebuffs, and frequent rudenesses, from the male sex, the young ladies surged eagerly and winningly around their new-found supporter and soon Jack was in his element.

He accepted the leaflets they thrust into his hands: “I have aalways had a very high opeenion o' gyurls chenerally,” said he gallantly: “and I wush you every success in your endeavours. I chust wush I wass able to be of some help…” and he bowed and touched his cap to every side.

“We are planning to demonstrate forcibly, Mr MacLachlan,” cried one particularly stunning red-haired girl with a wide-brimmed white hat and an enormous parasol, “we will show our sisters in London that we are prepared to follow their example.”

There was a chorus of approval.

“We would be chaining ourselves to the very buffers of the trains,” she continued, “but they will not even let us into the station. Or to the railings of the City Chambers: but the Council has placed guards in front of them.”

Once they had established that Jack was a sea-faring man, they showed particular interest in his ship and the unfortunate Hurricane, carried away somewhat by the heady glamour of his surroundings, gave into the temptation of gilding the lily somewhat both in his description of the puffer: and in regard to his position on board her.