Complete New Tales of Para Handy (59 page)

“And that very first night Keep Dark got kind of separated from his shupmates and found himself alone and up a back-alley in the derk which is no' the kind of thing you'd wush on your worst enemy in San Francisco. He got shanghaied poor duvvle, by a gang that wass crewin' up wan o' the Yankee Cape Horners — naebody would shup on wan o' them of his own free wull — and though he managed to sneak ashore three nights later afore she wass ready to put to sea, by that time his own shup had sailed without him and he wass stuck in America with only the clothes he stood up in.

“His luck changed, he met up wi' a man that wass in cherge of the lighthooses on the coast roond aboot, and him orichinally a Macfarlane from some wee vullage sooth of Oban. He offered Keep Dark a posting to wan o' the rock lights, ten dollars a month aal found, and of course my brither chumped at it.

“The lighthoose wass on tap of a rock chust off a long kind of a headland, and man but it wass a desolate place. There wassna a hoose within miles, and the landing on the rock in a wee bit skiff from the lighthooses relief shup wass a nightmare.

“The worst of it though wass the fog. Keep Dark said it wass fog even on from wan day to the next, it chust neffer lifted at aal week in and week oot, and effery 45 seconds your ears was splut wi' the blatter o' the huge foghorn on the cliff edge not 20 feet from the keepers' living room at the foot o' the tower.

“There wass only two of them on the rock and they worked six hours on, six hours off round the clock: it wass a funny kind of a shuft, said Keep Derk, but you got used to it. You even got used to climbing up to the tap o' the tower wance effery half hour to trum the light, and mak' sure aal was hunkey-dorey up there — no' that it would really have mattered whether the light wass on or off, because wi' the constant fog the light wass aboot as much use as a teeto-taller at a Tiree funeral.

“What you chust
couldna
get used to, though, said Keep Dark, wass the foghorn. It near deeved him to utter distraction, five seconds of sheer hell every 45 seconds night and day. It wass bad enough when you wass on waatch, but it wass when you wass trying to get some sleep that you felt like goin' up to the tap of the tower and throwin' yourself aff it.

“The other keeper wass an American caalled Purdie, a smert enough man, and he'd been on the station for years. ‘Ye'll soon get used tae the foghorn,' he says to Keep Dark wheneffer he'd be complainin' aboot the din, ‘and then you'll be like me — I neffer, effer hear it nooadays. It chust forms a pert o' the naitural background ass far ass I am concerned and I am totally unaware of it goin' aff at aal. Wait you and you wull see.'

“Keep Dark didna believe him, he wass at his wut's end wi' the din and he wass even thinkin' aboot tamperin' wi' the foghorn's automatic mechanism to shut the dam' thing up, even if it wass only for a half-an-hour.

“In the end, he didna need to. It did it for him! Wan night he wass on duty and Purdie, who slept like a log from the moment his heid touched the pillow, despite the fact that that dam' foghorn wass shakin' the very foondations o' the tower wi' the racket it wass making, wass snoring chently in his bunk ass peaceful ass if he wass in a boat drufting on some silent and deserted loch.

“Keep Dark wass sitting at the table reading an old newspaper and trying to pretend he couldna hear a thing when — withoot him knowing onything aboot it at first — there must have been some kind of a mechanical failure on the clockwork motor that ran the foghorn and set it aff automatically (it wass aal worked wi' some kind of a fantoosh self-winding hydraulic enchine) and it broke doon.

“So there wass Keep Dark, coonting in his head till the time the next blast was due — you got that you did that withoot even noticin' it, he said, it wass some kind of a defence system the body put up — and when he got to ‘41,42,43,44,45' and braced himsel' for the roar o' the horn, nothin' happened.

“Total, blissful silence for the furst time in the three weeks he'd been on the tower.

“What
did
happen, though, wass that Purdie wakened in a flash and leaped oot o' his bunk in a panic shouting ‘
Whit
in the name of Cot wass
that?
'

“Lighthooses!” said Para Handy firmly. “Dinna talk to me aboot lighthooses. They are nothin' but a trial and tribulation. If Keep Dark wass here, he would tell you himself.”

F
ACTNOTE

Para Handy's family are only hinted at in Neil Munro's original stories, but at least we know that he was one of ten sons, ‘all men except one, and he was a valet'. We are told the by-name of four of the others. They were (and it would be a fascinating if unproductive exercise to speculate how they got such unlikely nicknames) the Beekan, Kail, the Nipper — and Keep Dark.

Did Keep Dark get his sobriquet by virtue of the fact that he had worked on a lighthouse? Probably not, but that is my excuse for featuring him in this tale!

Davaar Island lies like a cork in the neck of a bottle at the entrance to Campbeltown Loch, its cliffs pierced with caves in one of which a local artist, Alexander Mackinnon, secretly painted — in 1887 — a representation of the Crucifixion which still forms a place of pilgrimage today. A shingle spit almost one mile in length connects Davaar to the mainland and although it appears to offer a safe and dry crossing, many walkers have been caught out by the flooding tides and it needs to be approached with caution.

The island gave its name to the Campbeltown Shipping Company's eponymous screw-steamer, launched in 1885. She was a beautiful little ship with a clipper bow, figurehead — and twin funnels set close together aft of the bridge. In 1903 she underwent a series of alterations which included replacing the twin funnels with a single smokestack. She gave four decades more of service before going to the breakers in 1943.

The first British maritime incursions to the Pacific were the 18th century naval or privateering expeditions in search of the fabled treasure galleons of the Spanish colonies in Peru and the Philippines.

Over the next century the clipper trade to and from the Pacific coast of South America was founded on three cargos — copper ore from the mines of Central Peru, nitrates from the arid deserts of Chile, and guano from the bird-islands offshore. Poor Keep Dark was sailing before-the-mast at the peak of these detested contracts.

All were loathed by the crews as foul cargos to be avoided when possible — nitrate was particularly susceptible to fire, for example — but the guano cargos were unquestionably the worst.

Guano was formed, quite simply, by the droppings of a thousand generations of seabirds as it accumulated on their isolated, uninhabited and uninhabitable breeding rocks and islands lying offshore. On some islets the guano deposits of millenia were more than 200ft deep.

L
EAD
K
INDLY
L
IGHT
— This is Davaar Lighthouse, on the eastern tip of Davaar Island at the entrance to Campbeltown Loch, and plainly there is some sort of regatta in progress. The two-funnelled steamer heading towards Campbeltown is the
Davaar
of 1885 and we can date the photograph as prior to 1903 for in that year she was reboilered and as a consequence of that alteration, her twin funnels were replaced by a single, broader smokestack. Her passenger lounges were enlarged and extended at the same time.

50

Twixt Heaven and Hell

T
he
Vital Spark
came lolloping into Loch Broom, and Dougie heaved a sigh of relief as they were drawn into its sheltering arms and the white-capped waves of the open sea dwindled into the distance astern. In ballast (she had come to the northerly port of Ullapool to load a consignment of cured herring in barrels for Glasgow) the puffer had been accorded a lively reception by the notorious waters of the Minch from the moment she had passed out of the protection of the Sound of Sleat.

“Man, but your tumid, Dougie, tumid!” said Para Handy from the wheel, “neffer happier than when you're safe inside the Garroch Heid. But the shup wass built to tak' this and more.”

“Maybe the shup wass,” replied the Mate, “but I am sure and I wass not. It iss at times like this that I think it would be no bad idea to look for a shore chob. At least the grund stays in the wan place and you are not aalways lookin' for something to hold on to, to stop you bein' thrown across the room!”

“Ah'm no' so sure aboot that,” said Macphail, poking his head from the engine-room hatch. “Depends whaur ye are. Take Sooth America for unstance, when Ah wis there wance wi' the Donaldson Line there wis that many earthquakes goin' on, the streets wis heavin' like wan o' the penny-rides at Henglers's, and if ye went ashore for a refreshment, ye daurna pit yer gless on the table for fear it wis cowped.”

Para Handy snorted. He had a very low threshold of disbelief in the matter of the Engineer's tales of his world travels and on more than one occasion had poured total scorn not just on the particular experience being recounted, but on the whole notion of Macphail having ever been further from the tenements of his native Plantation than the Irish Sea.

“Well, there's nothin' earth-shattering aboot Ullapool,” said the Captain. “For they are aal aawful Hielan' up here, the only excitement o' the day iss when the mail comes in from Inverness and it iss usually a week late even so. If it wassna for the herring-boats in season to help keep the place cheery, it might ass weel close doon for aal that ever happens.”

Indeed the town itself, a couple of streets of neatly presented white buildings on a promontory which terminated in the harbour itself, seemed asleep. The few remaining East Coast boats which came to the port for the brief herring season were at sea, and the only signs of commercial activity were the darkly-smoking chimneys of the two curing stations, all that were left of the once huge numbers of processing factories which had crowded Ullapool before the virtual collapse of the fishings thirty years previously.

“My brither Alec, the wan that wass in service and we didna talk aboot, Napkin Heid we cried him, he wass a year butling at wan o' the big Estates a few miles north o' the toon,” Para Handy continued. “He didna have a high opeenion o' the place at aal, and the man he wass working for wass the worst of it. The Laird had a quite dreadful reputation: he wass a most terrible man for the drink: he wass a gambler at the cairds and a maist unsuccessful wan at that: and the parlour-maids — not chust in his ain hoose but in aal of the big hooses, and even the Manse too — learned soon enough to run for their lives if the Laird wass aboot and wi' a dram on board.

“He wass the despair o' his poor wife. She was more than twenty years younger than him, a kindly soul Alec said, but no match for the Laird, and efter Alec had been in the man's service for six months or thereby, the poor wumman chust upped and left him and went hame to her own people in Dingwall and took the weans wi' her.

“That wass when things started to go really doon hill at the Big Hoose, Alec said. There wass nobody to even try to keep the man in check, the drinking perties went on aal night, and the cairds wass played seven days a week, for there wull always be disreputable cronies to gather roond a man like the Laird ass long ass he has his money.

“Within a couple of weeks of the wife leaving, Alec wass the only servant left at the hoose, aal the wummen had fled, and Alec himsel' had had mair than enough of it and was lookin' oot for anither place.

“The Meenister took to comin' oot to see the Laird, he thought it his Chrustian duty to save sich a dreadful back-slider, and tried to persuade him to get back on the straight and narrow.

“ ‘To bleezes wi' your straight and narrow,' said the Laird. ‘Is it no' enough that I come to the Kirk releegiously every Lord's Day?'

“ ‘You may come to the Kirk,' said the Minister, ‘but you always sleep through the service, and the congregation iss beginning to complain aboot it.'

“ ‘Nae doot,' replied the Laird, ‘but that'll only be because of my snoring keeping
them
awake. What else can you expect when you preach nothing but hellfire and brumstone? Lustenin' to wan o' your sermons would turn milk sour.'

“From that you can imagine that relationships between the Laird and the Manse wass very strained.”

The
Vital Spark
was now less than a hundred yards from the harbour and Para Handy, calling down for the engines to be stopped, let her drift slowly towards the stone quay. Sunny Jim moved forward and made ready to leap ashore with the bow rope.

The reception committee waiting on the quayside to welcome them to Ullapool consisted in its entirety of two very small, dirty and ragged urchins of about eight years of age, one engaged in throwing stones at the wheeling seagulls, and the other picking his nose.

“What wass also clear to Alec by now,” the Captain continued once the mooring process was complete and the crew retired to the fo'c'sle to brew up a pot of tea, “wass that the Laird wass chust destroyin' himself wi' drink.