Complete New Tales of Para Handy (30 page)

Two hours later the
Vital Spark
, riding light and making her best speed with a following tide, had Kilcreggan to port with every chance of making her berth at the Broomielaw before darkness fell. To speed their getaway from Lochgoilhead they had not taken time to stow the puffer's dinghy, which was now bobbing in her wake at the end of a tow-line.

Carmichael's bottle stood — unopened — on the top of the wheelhouse cubby pending their arrival in Glasgow: and their passenger, who had not uttered a word since leaving the bar at Lochgoilhead, other than to agree his passage fare of a florin with the skipper, was perched shivering in the bows, seated on top of his sole piece of baggage — a large tin trunk — with his coat collar vainly turned up against the cold.

“Jum,” said Para Handy, “Go and tell that man tae come in oot o' the cauld: he can come in here wi' us, or doon tae the engine-room wi' Macphail, but I'll no be responsible for him catching his daith by stayin' oot there.”

“Ye'll no' send him doon here,” protested a voice from beneath Para Handy's feet, but the problem did not arise, as the Englishman squeezed into the wheelhouse two minutes later having, with the help of Sunny Jim, moved his tin trunk from the bows to the stern.

“Yon trunk's some weight,” protested Jim. “What have ye got in there — it's no' a keg of whusky, eh, this bein' Hogmanay?”

“Whisky!” cried the man, “I would sooner carry dynamite about with me for it's a sight less harmful than that devilish drink!” And throwing back the lid of the trunk he revealed a great stack of leaflets, seized a handful and thrust one into the skipper's hands. “Whisky! It's an abomination and a curse, fountain of all the evil in this wicked world!”

“My Cot,” said Para Handy. “He's wan o' they teetotallisers so he iss!”

Sure enough, the leaflet proclaimed in large print ‘Clement's Campaign: Down With The Demon Drink!!!' and went on to describe in gory detail the horrors apparently attendant on the consumption of the merest drop of alcohol in any form.

“Nae wonder they wanted rid o' him at Lochgoilhead,” said the mate.

“A godless place,” cried Clement dramatically. “But I have seen worse in my travels across Scotland these past months. I was making some progress there. When I stood at the doors of the Inn and harangued the poor, blind sheep who were being lured to its wicked temptations, some of them turned aside from the path of sin and went their way.”

“I'll bet they did,” said Para Handy. “The sight and sound of you and your damn' nonsense would turn milk soor, never mind put any man off his drink: it's a miracle you got out of there in wan piece. If my friend Hurricane Jeck had come across you he'd have thrown you and your tin trunk intae the loch.”

As the Skipper turned back to the wheel, Clement caught sight of Carmichael's bottle and, before Sunny Jim or Dougie could stop him, he had seized it and, stepping out on deck, hurled it over the stern into the gathering dusk.

“That settles it…” cried Para Handy. “We're putting you off at Bowling, but ye'll pay for that whusky if you want to walk ashore dry-shod, otherwise you'll be swimmin' for it, and your trunk wi' ye.”

Banished back to the deck, and five shillings the poorer after meeting the Captain's demands for recompense, Clement stood in aggrieved silence as the puffer edged her way into the little harbour where the Forth and Clyde Canal joined the river.

“Peter, ye can't do this to the good folk at Bowling,” Dougie protested. “Many a fine spree we've had here. Now he'll be goin' round all the pubs and makin' a'body's Hogmanay a misery. Can ye no' tak' him up tae Gleska and let him loose there? He can't do mich herm in a city.”

“Naw,” said Para Handy. “He's goin' ashore here. But, Dougie, you've given me an idea. Tak' the wheel a meenit while I have a word wi' the man.”

Bowling was unusually busy, even for Hogmanay, with the little passenger boats loading for the journey up the canal to Glasgow and beyond. Clement was unceremoniously dumped on the quayside with his precious trunk, and was last seen making his way not to the nearest Inns, but towards one of the canal vessels.

“Where's he awa' to noo?” asked Dougie as the
Vital Spark
resumed her journey up-river and Sunny Jim went to check on the dinghy's tow-line.

“Well, Dougie,” said the skipper. “I think he might be on his way to Kirkintilloch: for I telt him that it was namely ass the most drouthy village in the whole country, and sair in need of some temperancising.”

“Kirkintilloch!” cried the mate. “Peter, there's no' a pub in the place. It's wan o' the few ‘dry' villages this side of the river ever since they had that stupid vote.” His voice tailed off as realisation dawned.

“Chust so,” said Para Handy. “Chust so. They do they're drinkin' at hame in Kirkintilloch. Mr Clement'll no manage to ruin onybody's Hogmanay up there!”

“And he's no' ruined ours either,” a delighted Sunny Jim called from the stern, and a moment later bounced into the wheelhouse with Carmichael's bottle in his hands. “When he threw oor whusky overboard it went straight intae the dinghy. And didnae' break!”

“Well, well,” said Para Handy. “It chust goes to show you, Jim, that as Mr Clement might put it — the duvvle looks after his own! Away you and get the mugs fae the fo'c'sle and we'll have chust the wan wee nip tae keep the cold out between here and the Broomielaw!”

F
ACTNOTE

Scotland has had some pretty arcane rules and regulations with regard to the sale and consumption of alcohol. This may have been the legacy of the somewhat ambivalent attitude towards drink which prevailed in Victorian times.

On the one hand, the ‘upper' classes deplored the ‘excesses' of the ‘lower' classes while themselves showing a healthy appetite for brandy, port and claret. On the other, the working-class quarters of towns and cities were well-endowed with temperance societies — counterbalanced by the proliferation of all manner of shebeens and drinking dens.

Periodically therefore some odd pieces of legislation (unique to Scotland within the United Kingdom) have been in force.

Glasgow had a ban on licensed premises in all municipally-owned properties, including housing developments, for three quarters of a century: a ban which was lifted only in 1966. There is little doubt that the absence of well-run public houses as community focal points in the new peripheral re-housing projects, into which so many families were reluctantly decanted from the inner city in the post-war years, was one factor in the problem of building a sense of local pride and purpose to replace that which had been left behind with the move.

Till the early 1960s, on Sundays no public house could open and Hotels could only sell drink to so-called
bona fide
travellers who had to enter name, address and destination in a book kept specially for that purpose, and open to police inspection, not to say public ridicule. The number of occasions on which the books revealed that Mickey Mouse had passed through en route to Hollywood was legendary!

More draconian still was the Temperance Act of 1913 which made provision for ‘Veto Polls' in each and every community whereby a small number of electors could enforce a vote as to whether or not pubs should be licensed within it. Kirkintilloch was one of a number of villages voted ‘dry' for more than 50 years as a result. Its near-neighbour Kilsyth was another. On the south side of the Clyde the rural Renfrewshire parish of Kilmacolm, in which I was born and brought up, was without a pub from 1913 till 1989 despite having had no fewer than seven before the veto was invoked!

There were also many real life equivalents of the Mr Clements of the story: peripatetic temperance campaigners were a common enough hazard in rural areas in which the population was too small, too scattered or simply too uninterested to establish a permanent Rechabite Lodge or a Good Templar's Hall.

26

A Girl in Every Port

T
he long wet winter was over, and the cheery touches of a green and cheerful spring were at last appearing on the hills and in the fields and gardens on either shore of the Firth. The pleasant effects of the change of the seasons were not lost on the crew of the
Vital Spark
as she went about her business and the welcome May weeks rolled past.

Para Handy, as befitted a man of his position, deployed his energies and his natural enthusiasm with yet more bounce than usual. Even Dougie's lugubrious countenance positively beamed and Dan Macphail, interred in the stygian gloom of the echoing stokehold, whistled at his work.

It was Sunny Jim's behaviour, however, which at once manifested in very practical terms the joy of the returning spring, but at the same time gave the crew in general, and Para Handy in particular, cause for concern. In spring they say a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of love: but in Jim's case it was his deeds rather than his thoughts which were in evidence.

No matter where the puffer tied up overnight, or how late, her young hand seemed to have an assignation ashore — and an assignation that simply would not wait.

“There he goes again,” complained Dougie as they lay one sunny evening at Millport, watching Jim marching smartly up the quay towards the town, his hair uncharacteristically combed and dressed, his cap at a jaunty angle, and his face and hands shiny with scrubbing at the pump. “And what did we get for oor tea tonight? Tinned sardines again. ‘Quick and easy, shupmates for Ah huv tae go ashore, but jist rammed fu' o aal the goodness o' the sea!' ” he mimicked disgustedly. “Huh! I'll ram him full o' somethin' and it won't be goodness, unless things improve — and soon.”

“Dougie's richt,” said Macphail emphatically. “It's aboot time ye dusciplined the boy before we all starve! Who's in charge on this boat, that's what Ah ask masel' — a whippersnapper of a laddie or a man auld enough to be his grandfaither?”

Para Handy, ignoring the disparaging suggestion as to his age, explained that his concern about Jim's misdemeanours was based more on an ethical than a nutritional consideration.

“The way things iss turnin' oot noo it's the laad's morals I am more worried aboot than I am aboot oor stomachs,” said the Captain. “He iss tryin' to run when he can scarcely walk. I had expected him to be content wi' chust the wan gyurl in hiss life, maybe a sensible Bowlin' lassie that he could see every time we are in there. But that iss not good enough for oor Jum!

“It is wan thing for a man wi' the sagacity and devagation o' Hurricane Jeck — or indeed mysel' when I wass in my prime — to be on caalin' terms wi a gyurl here or a gyurl there ass we wass peregrinatin' aboot the river: it iss a very different matter for a young fellow such ass Jum, who hassna had the chance to learn aal the niceties of dealin' wi' the fair sex, for that sort of experience only comes wi' practice.”

“Well, he's gettin' plenty of practice the noo, that's for sure,” interjected the engineer. “The baker's dochter last week when we wis in Fairlie: yon dairymaid in Largs: the lassie frae the goon shop in Wemyss Bay. Ah'm tellin' ye Peter, if he parades anither yin past us the nicht to show aff hoo smert he is like he's done up till noo, Ah've a dam' guid mind tae remind her whit he really is — jist oor deckie, and no' the flash dandy he likes tae think! Ah wonder who it's gaun tae be in Millport?”