Complete New Tales of Para Handy (22 page)

Macphail blenched visibly. “Ye're jokin' Ah hope!”

“I wish I wass,” said the Mate. “But I would not joke aboot ass serious a matter ass Cadger Campbell.”

“Ah should hope not indeed,” said the Engineer. “It wud be jist temptin' providunce if ye did!”

“For sure,” agreed Dougie miserably.

Sunny Jim had been growing increasingly restive during this (to him) totally incomprehensible and infuriatingly repetitive exchange.

“And just exactly who,” he managed to get in at last, “is this Cadger Campbell?”

“Dinna tell me that ye've never ever even heard o' the Cadger…” began Macphail.

“Look,” said Jim in total exasperation, “if I had heard o' the man I wudna need tae be askin' who he wis, wud I? Noo are ye gaun' tae tell me, or no'?”

“He's wan o' the most notorious skippers that ever had command on the river,” said Dougie. “He's lost wan chob after anither through drink an' fightin' an' he's been in the courts three times on a cherge o' wreckin' boats for the insurance only they could neffer prove it. What they did prove more nor wance though wass that he's a fist on him like a menagerie gorilla an' he's quite prepared to use it. The man's done fower spells at least in Barlinnie for assault. He's got a tongue on him as acid as a soor-plum and aal he can come by in the way o' work nooadays iss an occasional berth when the regular skipper's no' weel and there's an urchent chob to be done. Like noo, wi' us.”

“By comparison wi' the Cadger,” added Macphail, “Hurricane Jack is a teetotal pacifist wha kens every Moodey and Sankey hymn by hert an' sings them tae himsel' a' the day lang. Need I say ony mair?”

The Cadger came aboard at half-past-eleven the following morning, bearing about him like a miasma an aroma reminiscent of a distillery and a brewery rolled into one, and carrying a grubby canvas hold-all which clanked noisily, as of bottles, when he placed it down on deck in the wheelhouse.

He was more than six feet in height, a hugely-built man in his early forties with more hair in his ears and nose than most men have on their beards, and a lived-in face the colour of a side of raw bacon and the texture of a pebble-dash wall.

He picked on Sunny Jim at once.

“And who the bleezes are you?” he asked, pulling the cork from a half-flask of whisky retrieved from the hold-all. “Ah ken your shupmates fine — yon lanky streak o' a mate wi' the reputation o' bein' the most tumid man that ever set fit on a boat, an' the ither yin hidin' doon there pretendin' tae be a proper ingineer when he cudna even wind up a waggity-wa' nock wi'oot breakin' the spring.

“But you, Ah've never clapped eyes on you.”

Sunny Jim explained himself as best and as briefly as he could.

The Cadger's eyes lit up. “The Cluthas, eh! Weel, there's hope for ye yet: at least they wis boats wi' a turn of speed and a bit o' class aboot them. A bit o' a come-doon for ye tae finish up on this rust-bucket, though.”

Gesturing to Jim to cast off the mooring ropes fore and aft, he pushed the unhappy Dougie unceremoniously out of the wheelhouse and, without granting him the dignity of employing the whistle and speaking-tube for the purpose, he bellowed his instructions to Macphail, grabbed the wheel, steered the puffer out from the pier and set a course which would clear the northern promontory of the sheltering Holy Isle, and move towards the open waters of the Firth.

Four hours later the
Vital Spark
was well into Loch Fyne with the entrance to East Loch Tarbert just off the port bow, and their destination — Ardrishaig — only 12 miles ahead.

The atmosphere aboard was thick enough to cut with a knife. The Cadger, tipsy when he arrived off the
King Edward
, had been steadily demolishing firstly the half-flask of whisky, and then when it was finished the three quart bottles of stout which appeared to be the sole contents of the hold-all. Dan Macphail, hidden among his engines, had missed the worst of the relief skipper's verbal assaults and Jim, on the excuse of preparing the crew's dinner, had retired to the fo'c'sle — safely out of ear-shot, and out of sight as well: in fact though, so sudden and so unexpected had been the Cadger's departure from Lamlash that he had had no chance to replenish the ship's stores and the crew would go hungry till he could go ashore and stock up once they reached Ardrishaig.

The unfortunate Dougie, unable to make his escape, had suffered the brunt of the Cadger's unrelieved torrent of abuse, directed first at the boat, then at her ship's company one-by-one. Even the mild-mannered Mate was at breaking-point when the Cadger suddenly swung the wheel violently to port and headed into Tarbert harbour.

“It's no' Tarbert oor cargo iss at,” Dougie protested, “but at Ardrishaig. We've near two hours to go.”

“We're gaun nowhere wi' a dry shup,” growled the Cadger with some menace, pitching his empty bottles overboard. “Unless you want tae go the same way as ma deid men, get intae the bows and get ready tae pit a line ashore when we come alangside.”

Sunny Jim was summoned from the fo'c'sle, given a crumpled pound note taken from the Cadger's back pocket, and sent up to the village Inn to buy two bottles of whisky.

“What the blazes kept ye,” roared the Cadger when Jim returned 10 minutes later carrying not just the whisky, but two plain loaves, a bag of potatos and a couple of pounds of sausages as well, “and whit the hell d'ye mean by wastin' ma time and your money buyin' a' that breid and stuff?

“Never in a' ma life hiv I seen sich a bunch o' useless shilpit nyaffs as the three o' you. Macfarlane must be saft in the heid richt enough tae pit up wi' it: nae wonder the fence-posts did him sich a mischief at Lamlash!”

Para Handy came down the road to the jetty beside the Inglis brothers' Pointhouse Shipyard in the late afternoon of the following Wednesday, a bandage round his head and his left arm in a sling.

The crew welcomed him, like a long lost brother, with literally open arms.

“Now, now,” he cried, retreating in some embarrassment, “I am chust fine, chust sublime, stop this fuss this instant and tell me how you got on with Mr Campbell, for I'm sure he's the only reason you are so pleased to see me back again! Iss he still here?”

“He never actually got here,” said Sunny Jim. “Dougie brought her home frae Ardrishaig an' a right good job he made of it an' a'.” Whereat the mate blushed like a young girl. “Naw, Campbell the Cadger is probably still some-where on Fyneside, and lookin' for a cargo o' scrap — and his crew.

“By the time we got tae Ardrishaig he wis jist destroyed wi' a' the whusky he'd been drinkin' an' he went oot like a light.

“We were to lift the cargo o' scrap that the auld Hay's puffer
Aztec
wis bringin' hame frae Furnace when her biler blew aff Lochgair. They've decided she's no' worth the repairs an' she's tae be scrapped hersel' wance they can fix a tow tae Faslane.

“So wance we'd shifted the cargo, we jist cairried the Cadger over tae the
Aztec
'n' dumped him on a bunk in her fo'c'sle and changed the lifebelt wi' her name on for the wan wi' oors. Then Dougie brocht the shup tae Gleska.

“When Campbell finally woke he wud believe he wis still on the
Vital Spark
: he's probably huntin' through Ardrishaig for his crew richt noo!”

F
ACTNOTE

The Island of Arran, 165 square miles in area, and about 20 miles in length and 10 in width, has often been referred to and (in tourist terms) promoted as ‘Scotland in miniature'.

There is a logic to the claim. The island contains dramatic mountain scenery, fertile rolling farm country — both grazing uplands and arable lowlands — and a dramatic coastline from beetling cliffs to gentle beaches.

For generations Arran was a popular retreat for Glaswegians rich and poor and though the great days of doon-the-watter sailing have gone, and though more and more we desert our own land for sunnier shores when it comes to holidays, the island retains an immensely loyal following and maintains a mystique all its own.

The village of Lamlash was the first port-of-call for the steamers after the island capital, Brodick, and was a particularly popular haunt for break-takers during Glasgow's ‘September Weekend' — always the last weekend of that month and the (unofficial) end of the holiday season.

Holy Isle, which shelters the bay of Lamlash, takes its name from the monastery founded there in the early middle ages. That tradition of sanctity is maintained today by the Tibetan Samye Ling Buddhist community who purchased the island in 1992, have renovated the farmhouse and lighthouse, and plan to build two new centres as refuges for interdenominational retreats at those sites.

The ‘Pointhouse' to which the puffer's cargo of scrap-iron was consigned was the famous yard of A & J Inglis, builders of many generations of the most renowned of the Clyde steamers as well as whole families of ships great and small created for other owners, other waters and other purposes. The yard (sadly, like virtually every other Clyde ship-builder, long gone) stood on the north bank of the river Kelvin at the point where it joined the Clyde opposite Govan.

The character of Cadger Campbell is of course purely fictitious but it has to be said that there were always some notorious individuals on and around the river Clyde, as there were in any industrial environment anywhere! When researching background material for my factual study of Para Handy and his world (
In the Wake of the Vital Spark
, Johnston & Bacon, 1994) I was given much information which, even a generation or more after the event, I felt it unwise to specify. One snippet concerned a puffer captain reputed to have ingeniously ‘lost' at sea not just three (as in Cadger's case) but
four
puffers in pursuit of fraudulent insurance scams!

19

The Blizzard and the Bear

T
he frost had scarcely lifted all the February day and now at three in the afternoon, with only a couple of hours of daylight left, the first flurries of snow began to tumble from a steely grey sky which seemed suspended only a few feet above the tip of the puffer's mast. From the engine-room came the clang of the furnace-door being thrust open and the rattle of Macphail's shovel in the bunker as he prepared to spread another layer of coal onto the glowing fire.

The three other members of the crew were squeezed into the wheelhouse in a vain effort to keep warm by dint of numbers but the only effect of their combined presence in that confined space was that their breath, condensing on the windows, had almost completed misted the glass.

The Captain wiped the pane in front of him with an oily rag and peered vainly into the gloom of the dying day. The curtain of falling snow now made it virtually impossible to see anything beyond the bows, which were rising and falling smoothly on an oily swell. Fully laden with a cargo of slate from the quarries at Ballachulish and en route to Port Ellen in Islay, the
Vital Spark
was in the unfamiliar territory of Loch Linnhe and Para Handy had intended to put into Oban for the night.