Complete New Tales of Para Handy (47 page)

The funds available to celebrate the auspicious landmark in the Captain's life soon mounted up. The crew, wisely restricting their collecting-round to the local Inns, found that there was an encouraging support for their cause not only from many habitues of these establishments but from their owners as well.

“Peter Macfarlane has been a staunch supporter of mine over a lot of years,” observed the landlord of the Harbour Bar in the sort of response typical of his colleagues in the Tarbert and District Licensed Trades Association, “and it wud be churlish not to give him the encouraging word and the helping hand in his hour of need. Fifty! I find that very hard to believe.”

By late afternoon Para Handy's 50th Birthday Fund stood at the very handsome total of two pounds twelve shillings, and there now began a debate as to how best to dispense this magnanimous sum for the better pleasing of its unsuspecting recipient, who dozed the day away fitfully in his berth on board the puffer.

It was decided, after some heated discussion, that two-thirds of the funds collected should be expended on the purchase of a smart new navy-blue pea-jacket for the Captain. His own had seen much better days and was sadly frayed at neck and cuff, but was, even in that state, worn with pride on the Sabbath and on other special days or circumstances, for Para Handy was a man who would have been a commodore if he could, and retained pride both in his command and his appearance.

This still left almost a pound in the kitty, ample to finance a modest refreshment the following morning, on board the
Vital Spark
, for those who had made some contribution to it and who could be relied upon to help to cheer the Captain up on his day of gloom. The pea-jacket would be presented to him at the same time, by Dougie, on behalf of the assembled company.

When the crew awoke the following morning no hint was given to the Captain that anyone other than himself was aware that this was a special day. When Para Handy, as usual, went ashore after breakfast to telegraph the Glasgow office of the owner of the
Vital Spark
(and on this occasion to protest the delay in the arrival at the quayside of their return cargo, and to wait for a reply) the opportunity was taken to complete the purchases necessary for the surprise party, and assemble the company on board the puffer to await the Captain's return.

The publicans brought with them the beer and spirits for which Dougie had paid the previous evening and the very last three shillings was entrusted to the Tar, who was sent ashore to make the last-minute purchase which was (the pea-jacket aside) to be the centrepiece of the party.

“Go you to MacNeill's Bakery,” said the Mate, “and get the very best iced cake you can for a half-a-crown. Then go next door into the newsagents and buy one of they gold lettered cardboard favours you get for laying on top of the icing, one that says ‘Congratulations and Many Happy Returns on your 50th Birthday.' And buy a wheen o' wee cake candles at the same shop to put roond the edge.”

The Tar pocketed the coins, muttering again to himself, “Fufty! I still dinna believe it. Fufty!
Never
!” and went off to carry out his instructions.

On his return (Para Handy thankfully still not having finished his business at the Telegraph Office) he was sent below to the fo'c'sle where the pea-jacket lay, neatly parcelled, on one of the top bunks.

“When I gi'e you the shout,” said Dougie, “and you hear us aal sterting to sing ‘Happy Birthday to you', stick the pea-jaicket under your arm, light the candles on the cake and bring it up on deck.”

Ten minutes later Para Handy appeared on the stone quayside and stared in astonishment at the company gathered on the deck of the
Vital Spark
.

“Mercy,” he exclaimed. “What iss the occasion for this, boys?”

“You're the occasion, Peter,” said the landlord of the Harbour Bar. “Dougie found out that it's your birthday, and a rather special one, and we decided we should mark the occasion. It's not every day you reach ‘The Big Zero', eh, Peter?”

“Well, well,” said Para Handy, delighted, and cheering up quite dramatically, “It iss at a time like this that a man finds oot who his friends are.

“It iss indeed ‘The Big Zero' (though I cannot imachine chust how Dougie knew aboot it) and it iss a date that iss a reminder of time passing and a sobering thought indeed for any man when he reaches his fortieth birthday.”

Dougie, at the back of the crowd and adjacent to the hatchway down to the fo'c'sle, blanched.

“Colin,” he whispered urgently to his shipmate at the foot of the ladder, “Para Handy's ‘Big Zero' is his
fortieth
birthday, no' his fuftieth. We're in big trouble when he sees thon cake!”

“We're in bigger trouble than you think,” replied the Tar, “for I told you time and again I couldna believe it wis Para Handy's fuftieth birthday. He looks an auld man to me.

“I wis sure it wis his
sixtieth
— and that's the number on the favour I bought for the cake…”

F
ACTNOTE

Glasgow's highly-regarded and usually independent Department Stores are now nothing but a memory for — with the honourable exception of House of Fraser in the pedestrianised and improved Buchanan Street — they have succumbed to the changes in retail trading patterns and changes wrought (or so the retailers would have us believe) by consumer preferences.

It is passing strange though, that in London there survive such household names as Harrods, Selfridges, Army and Navy Stores, Harvey Nichols, Fortnum and Mason, Liberty — many more: while in Glasgow we have long lost the echoing galleries of Pettigrew and Stephen, Copland and Lye and, missed most of all, Treron on Sauchiehall Street, a seminal legacy of Edwardian architecture sadly gutted by a disastrous fire. The store was lost but at least the City Fathers decreed that its original fascia must be preserved and it now houses, among other residents and tenants, the respected MacLellan Art Galleries.

Spiers Wharf at Port Dundas, on the Glasgow branch of the Forth and Clyde Canal, was named for an Elderslie Tobacco baron whose influence in canal development in late 18th century Scotland was considerable. His warehouses survive, overlooking the now landlocked basin, converted into offices and town flats for the upwardly mobile.

Tarbert or Tarbet — there are at least three places in Scotland bearing the name — derives from the Gaelic for ‘Isthmus' and the topography of each confirms that.

Tarbet on Loch Lomond stands just over a mile east of the Loch Long village of Arrochar while in Harris in the Outer Hebrides Tarbert on the Minch coast of the island is less than a mile from the Atlantic shoreline to the west.

Best known of the Tarberts, though, is that on Loch Fyne where once again just about a mile separates the sheltered waters of that Clyde estuary loch from the Atlantic seaboard to the west which gives access to the islands of the Hebrides and the towns and villages of western Argyll.

In every instance, tradition speaks of Norse longships hauled by brute force across the narrow isthmus between one stretch of water and the next. At Tarbert in Argyll such manoeuvres made sense — not just in the semi-mythological reports of Viking incursions, but into recent historic times. Small fishing boats could readily be moved overland from coast to coast with less difficulty than they would face in undertaking the dangerous alternative of almost 150 sea miles round the notorious Mull of Kintyre in some of the stormiest waters in the country.

40

Here be Monsters

P
ara Handy was more than happy to see that the puffer would be sharing the first of the long flight of locks at Banavie, at the base of that triumph of engineering ingenuity known to all mariners on the Caledonian Canal by the sobriquet of Neptune's Staircase, with two small yachts.

“It will mean more hands, and the more hands that we have, then the lighter the work for us all,” he commented to the Mate as they contemplated the daunting series of locks — eight in all — which rose in front of them, tier on tier for more than quarter of a mile, and which the
Vital Spark
must now negotiate to gain access to the tranquil waters of the canal and a lazy lock-free six mile passage to the entrance to Loch Lochy.

It was some years since Captain and crew had last negotiated the canal. Most of their work was in and around the waters of the Clyde and the west coast lochs, but just occasionally the owner managed to secure some business which took them out of those familiar surroundings.

They were bound for Drumnadrochit on Loch Ness, in ballast, to collect a cargo of railway sleepers which had been brought down to the lochside from the big Forestry Sawmill at Cannich twelve miles inland. It promised to be a contract quite fraught with difficulties, for there was no pier at Drumnadrochit and, in a tideless inland loch, no way in which the
Vital Spark
could be brought close inshore on the flood to ground on the ebb. When Para Handy pointed out these problems to the owner, he was assured that the forestry team from Corpach had been loading such cargos successfully for many years, and that they would be perfectly capable of doing so once more.

It took four hours for the little flotilla to climb the locks to the top of Neptune's Staircase and, by the time that summit was reached, all hands were exhausted with the constant effort of manoeuvring the heavy wooden sluice-gates of each lock by muscle-power alone.

Para Handy consulted the pocket watch suspended from a nail in the wheelhouse.

“Six o'clock. I think we will chust moor here for the night and make oor way up to Drumnadrochit at furst light,” he announced firmly. “We have had a long day and I think that tomorrow wull be longer. And a smaall refreshment would be very welcome after aal oor exertions at the locks and I seem to recall that there is an Inns hereaboots.”

The crew's frustrations on discovering that the Banavie Inn was at the foot of the lock system rather than at its summit may be imagined.

“Well, if I had known that then I am sure we could have made good use of it while we were negotiating the first lock,” said a disgruntled Captain: “aye, and carried a canister or two of refreshments to keep us cheery on the way up.”

“Knowin' you lot,” put in Macphail, who was more nippy-tempered even than usual after the struggles of the past few hours, “If you'd been drinkin' your way up the locks then Ah'm sure you'd have forgotten, half-way up, which way she wis meant to be goin', and then for sure you'd have taken her right back doon to the bottom and had it do all over again.”

“Pay no heed, Dougie,” said Para Handy with dignity. “The man iss chust in a tantrum because he has had to do a day's work for wance, instead of sittin' in yon cubby of his with his nose in wan o' they novelles. Are you comin' with us, Dan, or are you chust goin' to stay up here and worry aboot what iss likely to be happening to poor Lady Fitzgerald and her man in the next episode?”

With ill grace the Engineer went to the pump and washed himself and a few minutes thereafter the three senior members of the crew headed off towards the Inn, leaving the unfortunate Sunny Jim on unwonted and (for him at least) unwanted guard duty.

“I am truly sorry, Jum,” said the Captain as they left: “but this iss unfamiliar territory to us and I dare not risk leaving the shup unprotected. Who knows what the natives might steal on us if they had the chance.”

“Ah suppose you think this is Red Indian country,” remarked the Engineer sarcastically. “In any case, who in their right mind would want tae steal onything aff of this auld hooker? There isnae a decent piece of marine equipment on her, and the local pawn wuddna gi'e much for yon old watch of yours.”

The trio were in much better spirits and a more amicable frame of mind when they returned just before midnight, for they had had a good run at dominoes, playing the locals for drinks, and an ungrudging conviviality prevailed. Even the discovery that their night watchman was fast asleep in his bunk, and by the look of him had been so for some hours, and did not even so much as stir when the shore-party tumbled noisily into the fo'c'sle, did not ruffle the Captain's equanimity.