Complete New Tales of Para Handy (66 page)

“ ‘
Rechabites
! They'll be the ruin o' me.'

“ ‘Tush, Peter Murdo,' says Jeck reproachfully — and he wass quite jocco — ‘for a Lochranza man you are givin' up aawful easily. The average chentleman of the Rechabite persuasion has exactly the same proportions of a thirst as you or me, it is chust that he hass rather less of an opportunity to indulge it, especially when his wummenfolk are aboot him. Tomorrow you will have to see to it that the men get a run at the refreshments and you will do very well.'

“ ‘But that's just it,' cried Cameron. ‘The wummenfolk wull be aal aboot them aal the time, and forbye Lochranza iss chust a wee place. They canna lose each other ass if this wass a lerge metropiliss like Campbeltown. They daurna come in to an Inns.'

“ ‘Well then,' says Jeck, ‘you will chust have to cater for the wummen at the same time, and whiles they are busy at their teas and scones who iss to know what their menfolk might be up to? Get yourself up early the morn's morn, wi' a wheen o' your frien's (and wan or two wives ass well) and I will show you.' ”

Para Handy paused to drain his glass, and look pointedly at the Engineer as he set it on the table in front of him. Macphail took the hint and signalled to a passing barman.

“I must admut,” the Captain continued, “that I thought Jeck had taken leave of his senses. But I had reckoned without the man's cheneral agility. He wass sublime, chust sublime!

“On Saturday morning we were up to the Inns at first light. You will mind, Dougie, that there iss a big white board along the front o' the hoose with PETER M CAMERON'S spelt oot on it in big bleck-painted wudden letters, and then inside there iss a corridor, and off it, two big rooms — the bar to the right, and a room on the left wi' tables and chairs where ye can take your refreshments in peace and ring a wee bell when you are wantin' anither gless.

“What Jeck did wass to tak' aal the letters off the board along the front o' the hoose, mak' another ‘O' oot o' the lid of a herring firkin, and hammer the letters back up on the board but this time so that they spelt oot TEMPERANCE ROOMS.

“Then he sent for a can o' white paint and a wee brush, and on the door in the corridor that led into the bar he wrote ‘Coffee Room and Smoking Parlour — Gentlemen Only': and on the door to the sitting room he wrote ‘Tea Room — Ladies Only'.

“And he got Cameron's wife, and three of her friends, to go and bake up a stock o' buns and scones and fancies that wouldna have disgraced a Baker's shop, and to fetch over aal their cups and saucers and plates and teapots and the like.

“He had Cameron put on his best Fast Day suit, and his wife a bleck dress and white peenie, and the two o' them wi' silver trays under their airms, and had them meet the excursionists at the heid o' the pier as they came off the shup at wan o'clock.

“Jeck himself stood at the Inns door and greeted the ladies wi' a most gracious bow that it wass a preevilege to behold, and ushered them aal into the big Tea Room.

“The chentlemen were asked to wait in the roadway till aal the ladies wass seated, and then Jeck invited them to come into the hoose.

“It chust needed the wan quick question at the entrance to find oot exactly what sort of refreshment the chentlemen were most anxious for, and ony that wass true teetotalisators (and there wassna but a handful o' them) wass quietly taken into the hoose next door where Jeck had arranged wi' Cameron's neebour that she would provide teas for any o' the chentlemen that wass soft enough in the heid to want chust that and nothin' else.

“It wass a roarin' success! Cameron took more money in that day than he had effer seen before in a week, and his wife and her friends did such a great tred wi' the ladies in the Tea Room that she wass able to pit new curtains right through the hoose wi' the profits on it. A total waste o' money, Cameron thought that, but he couldna complain.

“Jeck had thought of efferything. When it wass time for the steamer to sail, and the chentlemen wass leaving the Inns by the back door, Jeck even had a boy there passin' oot pan drops and soor plooms to the chentlemen so their wives wouldna jalouse chust what kind o' coffee and tea
they
had been drinking!

“Cameron had even struck a bargain wi' the Lodge Secretary that they would come back again the next month. ‘The best ooting we have ever had,' said that worthy, ‘for you have opened up a new world to us, Mr Cameron'. And Cameron had the grace to admit that if it hadna been for Jeck there wouldna have been any sort of new world for the Rechabites to open up at aal.

“Jeck got a half-a-case of whusky for his troubles, and Cameron gave me a crate of Bass beer, and that evening we loaded the wool and set off for Gleska.

“Next time we called at Lochranza we found that the planned return trup had been caaled off. There wass some things that even Jeck chust couldna legislate for.

“The chentlemen had aal gone back on board smelling as sweet as a nut, thenks to the lozengers and the boilings that Jeck had dispensed. What he could neffer have foreseen or prevented wass that some of them wass that cheery they began to sing on the trup home — loudly. And it wassna Moodey and Sankey neither. When the wummenfolk heard a roaring chorus of
The Foggy Foggy Dew
come echoing throughout the shup from the fore-saloon where the chentlemen had gathered, they realised something wass going on and a few enquiries wass put urchently in hand wi' some bemused and befuddled husbands, and the game wass up.

“But it was a rare high-jink while it lasted!”

F
ACTNOTE

Victorian and Edwardian society had an ambivalent attitude to drink and its problems and an ambivalent way of coping with the situation as well.

These were the generations which saw the peak of the Temperance Movements (although they were in serious decline by the end of the 19th century) but at the same time they were also the years of almost unlimited and unchecked consumption of alcohol.

T
HE
S
UMMER
‘T
RIP
' — Not, on this occasion, anything as depressing as a Templar's Outing but, probably, either a School or most likely a
Sunday
School picnic. These were common enough in the west of Scotland until well into the 1950s but are nowadays, I'm sure, a thing of the past. Higher standards of living and above all the wider availability of the ubiquitous motorcar mean that there is no novelty or excitement in an annual day-out by coach or steamer.

Temperance movements were usually led by the ‘middle' classes, the objects of whose campaigning were — inevitably, but all too frequently unjustifiably — the ‘working' classes.

Drink was perceived as a social problem with well-defined class boundaries and the heavy consumption of those more fortunate in their circumstances was accepted with good-natured tolerance while over-indulgence by the ‘lower orders' was railed against and vilified.

The two most influential Movements were the splendidly-titled Independent Order of Rechabites (British in origin and dating from the 1830s) and the Good Templars, imported from America in the 1870s. It is a fact that in both cases women were often leading protagonists. Where else, in the stifling chauvinistic atmosphere of the mid-Victorian era, could a woman hope to make her mark in the world? It was true also that there were as many backsliders and time-servers as there were genuine converts and followers among the male membership. Neil Munro makes several references to the standing of the Temperance Movements in the Para Handy, Erchie and Jimmy Swan stories. The Movements were accepted by then as legitimate targets for gentle humour — not cruel mockery: for mild parody — not merciless pillory.

There was even a brief nod in the direction of the teetotal lobby from the shipping companies. The
Ivanhoe
was a brave experiment, an alcohol-free vessel commissioned for and managed by a group of Clyde owners and operators — not for the benefit of the Temperance Movements, but for the sake of families whose enjoyment of the amenity of the Clyde was on occasion not just threatened but destroyed by the excesses of a raucous minority.

By the 1890s the problem of drink on the ships (which in any case history has probably, in retrospect, exaggerated) was more or less under control. The worst excesses had been snuffed out as operators improved supervision and control, and common sense and acceptable behaviour prevailed. The
Ivanhoe
reverted to the role of a typical Clyde steamer of her day.

Tea was no longer compulsory aboard her: but neither was strong drink.

56

Para Handy's Ark

S
unny Jim sighed hopefully. “Ah sometimes wush we could have some sort of an animal on the shup,” he said. “A dug, for instance. It's aye cheerier when there's a dug aboot the place. I think it's thon constant tail-wagging: it's infectious.”

“The only things infectious aboot dugs is fleas,” said Para Handy sharply, “And we are not having a dug on the vessel, so you needna even think aboot it. I have not forgotten the sorry business wi' yon Pomeranian that you borrowed a few years back, Jum, and I have no intention of repeating the experiment.”

“Aye,” put in the Engineer innocently, “you're kind of unlucky wi' animals when I come to think o' it. There wis the dug: and of course there wis yon cockatoo…”

“I wull not be reminded of that incident!” said the Captain indignantly. “Mony's the sleepless night it cost me.”

“…and there wis that coo at Lochgoilhead,” continued the Engineer remorselessly: “and your so-called singin' canary, and the tortoise, and of course Jeck's Fenian goat, and…”

Para Handy, who had been perched on the edge of the main-hatch smoking a peaceful pipe while Dougie took a trick at the wheel, leaped to his feet with an angry snort and marched off towards the bows, where he made a great show of studying the pier at Carradale — their destination with a cargo of slates, and which was now in plain sight — with such concentration and interest as to suggest that he had never seen a similar construction in his life before.

“Aye,” said Macphail to Sunny Jim, “he disnae like any reminder aboot those episodes at all. The man's no' canny when it comes to animals. He's no' very canny when it comes to human beings either, come to that.

“But Ah doot he means it, Jum: aboot the only animal you'd be allowed to put on board this vessel wud be a goldfish in a bowl and even then he'd find some way of stoppin' you. Para Handy and animals jist disnae mix.”

Late the following afternoon, with the Carradale slates safely ashore, the Captain received a telegram from the owner advising that their next cargo was a farm-flitting from Millport on the island of Cumbrae — its ultimate destination unstated.

The news did not greatly please the Captain, for farm-flittings were not his favourite consignment.

They required that the hold had to be carefully packed with any number of teachests crammed with clothes and linen and crockery and saucepans and all the minutiae of life, followed by the flotsam and jetsam of the farmhouse furniture, then — almost always — an awkward deck-cargo of a plough and a harrow and the carts which had brought most of the plenishings to the pierhead in the first place, and finally (just to top off the whole improbable mixture) the farmer and his family.

Para Handy therefore supervised the berthing of the puffer at Millport Old Pier the next day with ill-disguised displeasure, and looked around him for his cargo. There was no sign of it.

“That chust aboot puts the lid on it,” he complained to nobody in particular. “Not content wi' contracting a vessel as smert ass the
Vital Spark
to luft a mixter-maxter cairgo mair suited to a common coal-gabbart, they cannot even arrange for the goods to be here ready for us when we arrive.

“How much longer are we going to be kept hangin' aboot Millport chust like we wass on holiday?”