Complete New Tales of Para Handy (67 page)

The rhetorical question was soon answered.

A stockily-built, red-faced man in a suit of good tweeds walked onto the pier and up to where the puffer lay.

“Captain Macfarlane?” he enquired.

“Chust so,” said Para Handy: “and you wull be Muster MacMillan. But where is oor cairgo?”

“Here they come now,” said MacMillan, pointing to the pier gate and (before the startled Captain could respond by asking what on earth the man meant by referring to his cargo as ‘they') a strange procession came into view, coaxed along by six or seven farmhands with sticks.

Para Handy stared in total disbelief.

There were half-a-dozen cows, at least 20 blackface sheep, a sturdy Clydesdale, a couple of sows (one with a litter of tiny piglets) and a surly-looking boar, a few geese, rather more hens and ducks, and a couple of border collies.

“There must be some mustake,” the Captain spluttered, “we wass contracted for a ferm-flitting.”

“And what do you think this is, Captain?” MacMillan asked. “It is certainly not a menagerie.”

“But a ferm-flitting iss the furniture and the chattels,” Para Handy protested. “Naebody flits the
animals
. They stays on the ferm.”

“Not in this case, Captain,” replied MacMillan. “I am moving my livestock to a new farm. It is perfectly straightforward.”

“Not from where I am standing,” Para Handy countered. “Forbye we havna the facilities on board the shup for lookin' efter live animals, even if we had the knowledge for it.”

“But Captain,” said MacMillan, “they will only be on board for half-an-hour. Our destination is Fairlie, that is all, and my own men will be travelling with the beasts. All of the loading and unloading will be their responsibility. You are being asked simply to steer the ship two miles across the bay to Fairlie Pier and you are being paid handsomely for it.”

“The owner iss mebbe being paid handsomely” was Para Handy's somewhat caustic response. “There iss nothing in this for the poor crew. But, if it iss only for a couple of miles, and if your men wull handle the beasts, then I suppose we must chust grin and bear it.

“But I don't suppose your men are going to be responsible for cleaning up the mess on the decks of the smertest vessel in the coasting trade, though — eh?”

MacMillan ignored the suggestion, and at his signal the loading began.

An hour later Para Handy stared in pained disbelief from the wheelhouse window at the state of his beloved ship. The cattle were in the hold, lowered there by slings, and the Clydesdale stood patiently beside the mast. The pigs had been confined to the bows with a hastily-improvised pen knocked together by the farmer's men from a few wicket gates, but the sheep roamed everywhere and the poultry disputed with them for the limited deck space available.

“This iss chust a nightmare,” the Captain imparted to Dougie almost tearfully, “and I only wush that I could wake up and find oot that it wass!”

At that juncture MacMillan came along the quayside and Para Handy stepped out on deck to speak with him. “I am most grateful, Captain,” the farmer said. “There will be two cattle-trucks waiting at Fairlie and my men will have the animals ashore in no time. There is just one small thing, though: please don't say that the cargo is from Millport. I — er — don't want some of my rivals over in Ayrshire to know that I am moving my stock out of the island.

“Nobody will be interested, but — just in case they do ask — I would take it as a personal kindness if you would simply say that the beasts are from Arran.” And leaning forward, as if to shake the Captain by the hand, he pressed a piece of folded paper into his fingers — a piece of folded paper which, when Para Handy examined it in the wheel-house a moment later, proved to be a five-pound-note.

“There iss something chust not right aboot aal this Dougie, and I am sure and I do not know what to make of it at aal. And what on earth am I going to say in Fairlie if they ask me where we are from? A Macfarlane doesna tell a lie for any man!”

“Well,” said the Mate, pragmatically, “let's chust hope that nobody asks.”

Nobody did — because nobody needed to.

The
Vital Spark
was met, as she approached Fairlie, by a figure in dark blue uniform wielding a large magaphone and with a small crowd at his back.

“Puffer ahoy!” shouted the policeman. “Stand clear! You are not allowed to land those animals here, nor to tie up alongside. No other pier on the river will take you, either.”

Para Handy paled, and turned to the farmer's foreman, who was crouched down, hiding, at the starboard side of the wheelhouse.

“What in bleezes iss goin' on here,” he demanded. “Iss this stolen property we are carrying?”

“Naw, it's worse than that,” said the foreman wretchedly. “Wan o' the small ferms on the west side of Cumbrae has a suspected ootbreak o' foot-and-mouth disease, MacMillan foond oot aboot it yesterday, but since he'd already booked your boat to move his stock to a ferm he's bought at Hunterston, he wis jist hoping that he could get the beasts safely awa' and landed at Fairlie afore the news got oot. It seems he wis too late.”

Para Handy's reappearance at Millport was met with an even angrier rebuff than he had received at Fairlie.

“The only reason that the polis iss no here to greet you in person, Peter Macfarlane,” howled the irate pier-master, “iss that he has that scoundrel MacMillan under arrest for trying to move cattle oot of a controlled zone, and he is undergoing some prutty severe questioning doon at the polis office right now.

“If I wass you, I would chust get oot of here fast afore you're booked yoursel' ass an accessible after the fact, or whateffer the expression iss.”

The next three days — the worst three days of his life, Para Handy maintains, and he will expound upon them at great length to anybody prepared to listen — have passed into the legend and lore of longshore gossip on the Clyde.

No port or harbour on the river would allow the puffer to enter or moor, far less unload a cargo which was becoming more and more restive and (it has to be said) foetid as well. Para Handy even made a bold effort to attract the attention of the press and through them, perhaps, the sympathy of the public by trying to take his floating zoo right up-river to the Broomielaw, but he was frustrated by two of the Clyde Port Authority's launches which forced him to turn back at Renfrew Ferry.

The one concession that was made by Authority was made not to the crew of the
Vital Spark
or the farmer's men but to her live cargo: feedstuff and water for the animals was delivered daily by another puffer especially chartered for the occasion by one of the animal charities. The human beings on board were reduced to a diet of salt herring and potatos.

Relief came on the fourth day when the results of all the tests undertaken at the suspect farm on Cumbrae were completed — with negative results. A collective sigh of relief went up along the river and not just from the Clyde coast's farmers: there were some mightily relieved sailors as well, when the good news was finally communicated to the
Vital Spark
by one of the Greenock Pilot Cutters.

“You are more than welcome to land your cargo anywhere you like now, Captain,” said her skipper: “and I would imagine that somewhere with a public house close at hand would be your first choice, after all that's happened?” And with a laugh he turned back to his own bridge and gave the order which sent the cutter swiftly on her way, throwing up an impressive foaming wake as she did so.

It was with great deliberation, but great satisfaction as well, that Para Handy, ignoring the protests of MacMillan's men and insisting on his right as master of the vessel to make all the decisions appertaining to her safety and convenience, reached that decision — and landed the animals back at Millport.

“Well, now MacMillan can stert aal over again,” he observed to Dougie, “if onybody'll deal wi' him. Which I doot. He's pit
his
foot in his mooth chust the wan time too many, I'm thinking.”

F
ACTNOTE

Dan Macphail's unkind references to his Captain's earlier misfortunes need no explanation for those who are familiar with Neil Munro's original tales. The watery fate of the unfortunate cockatoo is a classic.

The two Cumbraes lie just off the Ayrshire coast between Largs and Hunterston. Little Cumbrae has been uninhabited in historic times except by the keepers of its lighthouse, but Great Cumbrae was a popular holiday destination for many years and still attracts a loyal following. Millport, the capital, was served by two steamer piers but this did not save the resort from the so-called ‘Siege of Millport' in July 1906 when the steamer companies refused to pay increased pier dues to the Town Council and withdrew all services.

Everything from puffers and motor launches to rowing boats and yachts was dragooned into service to convey holidaymakers (and business travellers) in and out of the island, for the effects of a protracted shut-out would be an economic disaster for the island. In July the resident population was swelled five-fold with the arrival of the Trades Fair visitors.

After some behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing a compromise was reached and normal service resumed within the week. One has the feeling that the shipping companies themselves could not have afforded a protracted strike since not only would their steamers be losing revenue, thanks to the loss of all passenger traffic, so also would the railways which owned the steamers and which themselves normally carried the crowds from Glasgow down to the Ayrshire piers — at a considerable profit.

In the years before the Erskine Bridge and the Clyde Tunnel and the Motorway across the Clyde there were many ferry services for vehicles and passengers from the upper reaches of the river down as far as Erskine. Here and at Renfrew there were two chain-ferries, which pulled themselves undramatically but quite efficiently to and fro across the river by steam-powered pawls clanking their way along a fixed chain.

Both these vessels came in on concrete slips at either bank so the state of the tide was of no concern to them. Further up the river, where ferries operated to stone quays, significant tidal implications stimulated the development of the ingenious ‘elevating ferries' of Finnieston, Whiteinch and Govan. Their carrying-decks were not attached to the hull which provided the flotation — they were in fact platforms suspended from three perpendicular girders to each side, port and starboard, raised or lowered by steam-winches according to the state of the tide, and so could always be docked at the same level as the quays.

57

Follow My Leader

T
he
Vital Spark
had just threaded her way through the narrows of the Kyles, en route to Tarbert with a load of salt for the curing stations, when the stac-cato beat of paddle-wheels echoed across the water astern of the puffer. Para Handy, at the wheel, turned to identify the approaching vessel.

A few minutes later, as the Captain feigned indifference under the pretence of studying the shoreline of the island of Bute to port, a smart two-funnelled paddler in the livery of Mr David MacBrayne swept past perilously close on the puffer's starboard beam at full stretch, with an imperious and quite unnecessarily prolonged blast on her whistle, and then sped off towards Tighnabruaich pier, laying out as she did so a phosphorescent twin-track, turbulent wake in which gleaming ribbon the hapless
Vital Spark
lurched and dipped with the awkward ungainliness of a floating bathtub.

Sunny Jim, who had been down in the fo'c'sle frying up sausages for the crew's dinner, came scrambling up on deck to find out what was responsible for sending half the contents of the pan skittering across the stove.

“Ye clown,” he shouted after the vanishing paddler: “that's the maist o' wir denner on the deck! So mich for conseederation and the rule o' the road!”

“Neffer heed him Jum,” said the Captain, “it iss not worth your while getting aal hot and bothered. Yon's Sandy McIver and his precious
Grenadier
, behavin' ass if he owns the river, but I can assure you there wass a time when he wass chust ass angry wi' the
Vital Spark
ass you are wi' him noo. And he's neffer forgotten nor forgiven either, in spite of what it says in the Good Book, which iss why he dam' near runs us doon every time he sees the shup.