Complete New Tales of Para Handy (39 page)

Known to generations of commuters as the Subway (never the Underground — London terminology eschewed by Glaswegians) there have been proposals down the years for extending the network but these have come to nothing. The simple circle has served efficiently, effectively and economically as a mover of people for exactly one hundred years.

The old Subway did indeed have an odoriferous atmosphere all its own, lost for ever in the process of modernisation. Warm, damp, musty, primeval (yet not unpleasant) it was pushed in front of the carriages as they threaded the dark tunnels: spilt out into the stations as the trains arrived: and percolated up the escalators to the streets above. Nobody knew what caused or created it but it was unique to the Glasgow system — and sadly missed by those who remember it with affectionate nostalgia.

Devotees of Neil Munro's tales of the adventures of ‘Jimmy Swan the Joy Traveller' will recognise in this episode the shadowy figures both of Mr Swan himself, and of the Glasgow Wholesale House whose kenspeckle representative he so successfully was.

R
ING A
R
ING OF
R
OSES
— One of the most appealing features of the MacGrory archive is that so many of its pictures are natural and spontaneous though most other surviving photographs of the age were carefully and predictably posed. This lively picture of schoolgirls at play is a delight and, given the ponderous equipment and the slow shutter-speeds of the time, a remarkably crisp action shot.

33

A Naval Occasion

T
he puffer had spent the last two days at Salen, on the island of Mull, unloading the mixed paraphernalia of a farm flitting and was now bound for Oban where a cargo of whisky in cask from one of the local distilleries awaited her on the town's North Pier, scheduled for delivery to a blending and bottling plant in Dumbarton.

It was ten o'clock on a glorious July morning as the
Vital Spark
passed out of the Sound of Mull, leaving Duart Castle on the starboard beam, and the panorama of the Lynn of Lorne and the sheltered stretch of water between the islands of Lismore and Kerrera came into view.

At least a dozen navy vessels ranging in size from dread-noughts to torpedo-boat destroyers were at anchor outside Oban harbour to the west of Ganavan Bay. Furthest from the shore, towering over the other ships of the flotilla, lay the giant dreadnought battleship
Bellerophon
and inshore from her a scattering of smaller vessels including the venerable cruisers
Theseus
and
Grafton
, several light cruisers, and two modern destroyers, the
Cossack
and the four-funnelled
Teviot
.

Para Handy, at the wheel, guided the puffer to pass as closely as commonsense dictated beneath the soaring grey bows of the
Bellerophon
and gazed admiringly at her towering upperworks and huge twelve-inch guns.

“Brutain's hardy sons,” he said with some emotion, watching the ratings drilling on the quarterdeck as the
Vital Spark
crawled the length of the battleship's hull.

The squadron, part of Britain's Atlantic fleet, was in Scottish waters on an inshore training excercise and had anchored just a matter of three hours previously, having entered the Firth of Lorne after negotiating the sound between the Torran Rocks off the south-west corner of Mull, and the island of Colonsay.

The signal halyards were busy as the fleet exchanged messages and instructions, and a number of cutters and motor launches manned by immaculate ratings sped between ships carrying men and materials.

Very conscious of the uncomfortable contrast between his own command and the naval elegance so openly on display, Para Handy rounded the northernmost point of Kerrera with — almost — some sense of relief and some recognition of the shortcomings of his beloved
Vital Spark
. Even here, though, he could not escape the presence of naval supremacy for one ship had been deployed into Oban Bay itself and was now the centre of attraction for the summer holiday crowds thronging the esplanades and the piers of the popular summer resort.

Moored some 300 yards off-shore and approximately equi-distant from the South and North Steamer Piers was the cruiser
Shannon
, the equal of the
Bellerophon
in overall length though not, of course, in bulk or armament. Ratings were swarming over her decks erecting white sun-awnings, and a mahogany companionway ladder was being deployed from the midships entry port on her starboard side (facing the South Pier) onto a floating pontoon against which two motor pinnaces were tied up. On the port side of the cruiser a more modest Jacob's Ladder hung from the rails of the quarter-deck.

The
Vital Spark
bumped gently against the timber uprights of the cargo berth on the North Pier and Sunny Jim leapt ashore with the bight of the bow mooring rope in his hand.

Ten minutes later, with the puffer safely secured and the crew now perched up on her main hatch watching the passing show as a veritable fleet of dinghies and small yachts circled the anchored cruiser, Para Handy presented himself at the dingy dockside office — little more, in truth, than a small wooden hut — of his owner's local agent.

“I'm afraid I have to tell you that your cargo is still up at the distillery, Captain,” said that worthy, somewhat shamefaced and flustered. “What with the fleet coming in and all, the town has declared an unoffical holiday and there is just no way that I can get even one carter today, never mind a squad.

“Why don't you just regard it as a holiday for yourselves and take the day off? I can promise you a top-notch team to fetch your cargo at first light tomorrow.”

“Well, at least we couldna get a better day for it,” conceded the Captain as he, Dougie and Macphail settled down on a bench outside the Lorne Arms with a glass of ale apiece. Sunny Jim had gone to take a stroll about the town, no doubt — as his somewhat envious older colleagues correctly surmised — to see what young ladies in their summer finery had been attracted onto the Oban esplanade by the fine weather and by the occasion.

“Better day for what?” snapped Macphail ill-temperedly. “Better day for drummin' wir heels in this back-o'-beyond towerist trap for near enough twenty fower hours? Ah can think of mony places Ah'd raither be and mony things Ah'd raither be daeing.”

Para Handy shrugged but maintained diplomatic silence while Dougie went off in search of one of the Bar's sets of dominos in the hope that a test of skill and chance at a half-penny each game might help to pass the time in a pleasanter atmosphere.

Macphail, however, was in no frame of mind to be fobbed off with such an inadequate palliative as a game of ‘the bones', as he disparagingly described it, and tensions were again mounting when Sunny Jim rejoined the party, just before one o'clock, and in a state of some excitement.

“Ah've been roond on the Sooth Pier,” he announced breathlessly and without preamble, “and it's fair hotching wi' folk. The Navy's openin' the shup to the public-at-large this afternoon and layin' on twa pinnaces to tak' them oot and back.”

“Bully for the Navy,” said Macphail caustically. “What's that tae us?”

“Simple,” said Jim. “There's money to be made on it.”

The recollection of some of Sunny Jim's previous money-making schemes, from the successful but nearly catastrophic affair of the Tobermory Whale to the totally unrewarding scam involving a purported marathon swim the length of Kilbrannan Sound, lurched uncomfortably through the memories of his audience.

Para Handy was the first to recover his composure.

“How?” he asked bluntly.

“Easy!” said Jim. “The pinnaces is runnin' to the shup from the Sooth Pier only. There's nothin' to prevent us takin' oot a hired rowing-boat for the afternoon and ferryin' the towerists oot to the shup from the
North
Pier at sax-pence a time, and landin' them onto the Jacob's Ladder on the port side where the Officers and that'll no' see them, for they'll be too busy on the starboard helpin' the young lasses aboard and then tryin' to tempt them wi' the offer of a tour of the shup's engines.”

There was a moment's silence, until:

“Capital, Jum, capital!” cried Para Handy. “You aalways have the eye for a bit of business wheneffer the opportunity arises and you have excelled yourself this time. The towerists from the North Esplanade hotels will be chust delighted that they do not have to walk aal the way to the Sooth Pier, and how are they to know that the service there iss for free?”

Even Macphail was grudgingly, cautiously welcoming of the idea and it was Dougie who spotted a possible flaw in the management of the operation.

“There iss chust wan wee thing,” he pointed out. “How are we to bring them back again? It's one thing to slup them on board on the quiet side of the shup but another thing entirely if they start queueing at the head of the ladder and looking for us.”

That had not been thought of, and for some time the four sat wordlessly, exploring the possibilities of overcoming what now seemed an intransigent problem.

“Got it!” Sunny Jim cried excitedly after some minutes. “We jist dinna tak' them back at all! We tell them it's a roond trup and they're to go back to the Sooth Pier in the pinnaces.

“Once they're on board, we can forget all aboot them. They're no' oor problem then, they're someone else's. The Navy's, and they'll jist huv tae tak' care of it.”

The afternoon, even by the most exacting standards, could only be judged an outstanding financial success.

Such was the popularity of the passage by rowing-boat from the North Pier that the crew — who had intended to take it in turns to row as pairs (Para Handy teamed with Sunny Jim, Dougie with Macphail) — found themselves forced to hire a second boat from McGrouther's slip, and provide a non-stop shuttle service to the unsuspecting
Shannon
for more than two solid hours.

Sunny Jim's surmise — that the Officers and crew would be much too busy appraising the young ladies attracted to the
official
point-of-entry on the starboard side — proved to be perfectly accurate and the crew of the
Vital Spark
landed their own contraband consignments throughout the afternoon without any trouble whatsoever.

By half-past-four the crowd on the North Pier had thinned to an unrewarding trickle and, in any case, the crew by that time were exhausted by their unbroken exertions in the heat of the day. Sending the last handful of their prospective passengers, some of them protesting querulously, to walk their way to the South Pier, Para Handy and his crew returned their hired boats and settled with their owner.

After meeting all expenses (which had had to include recruiting a local youth to marshal the queues on the Pier while the boats were on the water) a substantial surplus remained. Sunny Jim was despatched to the nearest butcher's shop to buy steaks: the Mate went in search of a green-grocer's from which he returned burdened with punnets of wild mushrooms and fresh strawberries: Macphail staggered back from the Argyll Arms bearing two very large canisters of ale: and Para Handy negotiated a ‘favoured friend' price for two bottles of finest malt whisky from the Manager of the distillery whose wares they were to load the next morning.