Complete New Tales of Para Handy (20 page)

“The finest vessel on the Firth,” he said firmly, with a pride and enthusiasm of which Para Handy would have most thoroughly approved, “sailing tonight for distant seas and far horizons under the command of yours truly.”

And when, reluctantly, he dragged himself from their midst on the plea that he must return to his ship, the red-haired girl insisted on walking with him to Anderston Quay.

“Not as big as I would have wished,” she said mysteriously when they reached the
Vital Spark
at her berth. “But she will do.” And resisting Jack's clumsy attempt to place a farewell kiss on her cheek she jumped nimbly aboard a city-bound tram and waved him goodbye from its upper, open deck.

“So there you have it, shipmates,” said Jack, beaming on the company. “Bonnie gyurls and a friendly atmosphere! D'ye think they wud have
me
for a suffry-jet for I would enlist tomorrow chust for the sake of the cheneral frivolity?”

“You're some man for the high jinks,” said Para Handy enviously and the crew climbed on deck and started to prepare for their delayed departure.

Macphail scurried into his den to stoke up the boiler fires and Sunny Jim and Dougie lashed the puffer's dinghy firmly across the hatch of the hold.

As Para Handy, Hurricane Jack just behind him, opened the door of the wheelhouse, they were all suddenly aware of the music of a brass band a few streets away — but coming rapidly nearer. It sounded too as if a crowd was singing along with the playing of the band, and there were periodic excited whoops and cries.

Then the clash and crash of the band and its followers became overwhelming, as the head of a substantial procession appeared round the corner of one of the warehouses and headed straight towards the
Vital Spark
.

There were several hundred women trailing the band, singing enthusiastically at the tops of their voices, and a handful, all bearing suffragette placards, heading it. In the very van was a tall, red-haired girl wearing a broad-brimmed white hat and twirling a parasol on her shoulder.

The song died away as the band came to a halt on the dockside immediately alongside the puffer. The marchers massed behind it in a semi-circle and a repeated staccato chant went up: “Votes For Women! Votes For Women! Votes For Women!”

With a smile and a wave to the perplexed Hurricane Jack, the red-haired girl and two others stepped forwards and suddenly producing sets of hand-cuffs from, it seemed, thin air, they attached themselves to the hawsers holding the puffer fore and aft onto the quayside and threw the keys into the water.

“Jum,” said Para Handy glumly, “wull ye go an' tell Macphail he needna bother gettin' up steam: and Jeck, seein' you got us into aal this, wull you go and fetch a polisman? You know where I'll be if you need me.”

And, turning his back on the triumphant, chanting crowd, he made his way slowly along the deck and vanished down into the fo'c'sle.

F
ACTNOTE

Glasgow's George Square has for generations been ‘centre stage' for rallies, protests and public meetings ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. It thankfully escaped the worst ravages of the city's post-war architectural vandalism and is still overlooked by the magnificent Victorian facades of the City Chambers, the General Post Office, and other properties in keeping with its scale and character: but one doesn't need to look further than the adjacent skyline to see the philistine treatment which parts of the city received in the fifties and sixties.

The Queen Street and Central Stations have survived more or less intact but long gone, and much lamented, are the more modest but characterful Buchanan Street: and the most imposing of them all, St Enoch's, with its sweeping carriageway and the towering gothic frontage of its integral hotel.

A F
ORMIDABLE
M
ATRIARCHY
— The sole man in this family group looks appropriately worried about the encroaching feminism! Victorians were still getting used to the whole idea of photography and the only member of this particular group who looks at all happy about having a picture taken is the dog!

The Suffragette Movement was at its zenith in the first decade of the century, spurred on by the leadership of Emmeline Pankhurst. As well as political protest and pressure, it relied on less peaceful means of promoting the cause and what we would now call publicity stunts ranged from the relative innocence of protestors chaining themselves to railings at the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace or anywhere else where they felt attention would be focussed upon them: to the tragedy of the Derby of 1912, at which the Suffragette Emily Davidson threw herself under the hooves of King George V's horse, brought it down, and was herself trampled to death.

Many historians feel that the public revulsion stimulated by such activities was counter-productive to the cause, and that what in a sense ‘saved' the Movement was the First World War, in which women played an incalculably valuable role. Indeed some commentators see the easing of suffrage restrictions which followed that holocaust as the country's way of recognising the service of the nation's womanhood.

One of the more colourful, though less high-profile, supporters of the Movement was the composer Ethel Smyth, who joined the suffragettes in 1911 and in the same year composed for them what became their battle hymn — the splendidly up-beat and instantly memorable ‘March of the Women'.

It is one of the few of her compositions recorded and marketed today. But she merits a much wider audience for such stirring programme music as the overture to her opera
The Wreckers
and above all for her magnificent and moving mass, written in 1891 and first performed in 1893 — but not heard again for more than 30 years. Now available on CD it memorably deserves acclaim and recognition.

17

The Missing Link

P
ara Handy looked up from his perusal of the
Glasgow Herald
with considerable surprise. “My Chove,” he said, “did you read this piece in the paper aboot the Piltdown Man, Dougie?”

Captain and Mate were alone in the fo'c'sle: Macphail was carrying out some running repairs with, to judge from the baffled curses which could occasionally be heard even from the forefoot of the vessel, scant success. Sunny Jim had been sent ashore with a long shopping list, for this brief stop-over at Partick would be their last chance to stock up the provisions cupboard for some days.

The puffer was on her way from Rutherglen, where she had loaded a farm flitting, and would shortly be sailing for the remote clachan of Bellochantuy on the western shores of the Kintyre peninsula. It would be some days before they were within hailing distance of a shop again.

“Piltdoon Man?” asked the mate: “and who might he be when he iss at hame?”

“He iss not at hame any longer,” said the Captain, “for he hass been dead now this many thoosands o' years: but he used to live in the sooth of England and some professor or somethin' hass been and dug him up again, and says he iss the ‘Missing Link', whateffer that might be.

“Chust look you at this picture, Dougie,” he commanded, handing over the paper, opened at the page carrying the story of the Piltdown discovery under a banner headline, and bearing beneath that an artist's impression of what the ‘Link' was thought to have looked like.

“It is quite uncanny!” continued the Captain with considerable conviction. “Did you effer in your naitural, if you were chust to shut the wan eye and look at it sidey-ways, see onythin' that pit ye mair in mind o' Macphail on wan o' his aff days?”

The Mate peered quizzically at the sketch.

“He certainly disna look too healthy,” he said at last: “but iss he not raither mair like thon English chentleman that wass up for the shootings at St Catherine's last year, and shot himsel' in the foot, and we had to gi'e him a hurl across the loch in the punt, ower to the doctor's at Inveraray?

“I think it iss a wee bit unkind o' ye to be comparing him wi' poor Macphail, Peter. Even after 30 years shuvveling coal Dan's airms iss no' quite ass long ass that.”

“Whateffer you think yoursel', Dougie,” said the Captain: and carefully folded the paper before placing it on top of the mess table: “but I will be interested to have Jum's opeenion when he gets back wi' the proveesions.”

At that very moment Sunny Jim was coming to the end of a longish grocery list in a branch of the Glasgow Co-operative on Dumbarton Road.

“And six pounds o' best pork sausage,” he concluded.

“Links or Lorne?” asked the grocer.

Jim thought for a moment. “Mak' it links,” he said at length “and a couple of black puddin's, and twa mealie wans too, jist for a wee divershun tae go alang wi' the sausages.”

The grocer weighed out the goods, wrapped them in grease-proof paper and perched them on the top of the large cardboard box into which a full week's supplies for the crew of the
Vital Spark
had now been consigned.

“Onything mair?”

“Seein' I'm here, Wullie,” said Jim, “you could jist open me a screw-tap o' Worthington and I'll get ootside that while you're doin' the sums.”

And he leant sociably on the brass-edged counter pulling at his beer while the Co-op man, licking the point of his pencil at intervals with a sigh of fierce concentration, totted up a long column of figures once, then twice to check it, and finally a third time — apparently for luck.

“That'll be five pund fifteen and saxpence,” he said at length, straightening up and handing the document to Jim: “and anither saxpence for the ale.”

“Mercy! Near on six pound! I'm sure I didna think I wis buyin' the premises when I cam' in.” said Jim. “And a tanner for the beer! Are you no' throwin' that in for the good wull o' the hoose?”

“Ah canna dae that,” said the grocer. “For it's nae ma hoose and the chentlemen in Morrison Street wud soon be throwin' me oot of it if they foond Ah'd sterted tae gi'e the goods awa' on a whum.

“Whit Ah can dae for ye is send wan o' the delivery lads doon wi' the box on a bike tae the boat. That'll save ye a pech. And I'll gi'e ye a nip o' my ain whusky.”

And on that offer the bargain was struck. Sunny Jim paid with six crumpled pound notes, pocketed his change, swallowed a generous dram poured from the bottle gifted to the grocer by one of his suppliers, and saw the box safely loaded onto the metal cradle at the front of the delivery bike.

“See and no' cowp it,” he admonished the youngster who was to pedal it, “for there's eggs in there, and as we dinna like them scrambled you'd best get them tae the shup in wan piece. Put the meats in the wire safe on the foredeck, and the rest o' the stuff in the fo'c'sle. And tell the Captain I'm on my way.”