Complete New Tales of Para Handy (57 page)

The country fairs which criss-crossed Scotland on their travels were the eagerly awaited event of the year in many of the most isolated communities and their ‘attractions' did indeed include the notorious boxing-booths to which any local aspirants of the ‘noble art' were lured (to provide entertainment for a paying audience) by the promise of a shilling or two if they could last a round — or three rounds, depending on the generosity of the proprietor — against the veteran thugs who were the stock-in-trade of the whole enterprise.

Cairndow Church, at the northern arm of Loch Fyne, has a unique octagonal parish kirk, built in 1820, which attracts visitors year round. The loch itself at this point is now heavy with the cages of salmon-farms.

R
OLL UP
, R
OLL UP
! — The annual Fair or Show was the highlight of the summer for many isolated Argyllshire towns and villages, and here the McGrory brothers have captured some of the atmosphere of those occasions. To the left, the tall post of the ‘Ring-the-Bell' test of strength towers above the twin booths of conjurers, and to their right, catching the attention of the passers-by, is a boxing booth, the gloves for unwary challengers hanging from poles across its frontage.

48

Cafe Society

M
rs Macfarlane looked appraisingly at her husband over the rim of her breakfast tea-cup and came to a decision about something which she had been mulling over in her mind for some days.

“Peter,” she said firmly, “I think it is high time that I invited Mrs Macphail and Mrs Campbell to tea. You spend most of your life with their husbands yet I've only met them once, very briefly, at our wedding. And,” she added with a smile, “since I had a lot of more important things on my mind that day, I don't think I gave them the attention they deserved. It would be nice to get to know them a little better.”

Para Handy grimaced.

“I am not sure that that iss such a good idea, Mery,” he said hesitantly, picking his words as carefully as he could. “Effer since we got merried I have made a point of keeping my home life quite separate from the shup. Besides, the three of you mightna get on, and that could strain relations between the menfolk, and it's herd enough ass it is bein' cuvil to Dan when the moods iss on him, or copin' wi' wan of Dougie's tirravees if he's had a bad weekend at hame.”

Mrs Macfarlane bridled.

“Are you suggesting that I am difficult to get on with?”

“Not at aal, Mery,” he said hastily. “You are sublime, chust sublime, and the wumman that couldna get on with you would be a sorry case indeed.”

And so the necessary arrangements were made and, the following Thursday, when their men were buffeting through a March gale in the Sound of Mull, the three ladies took a lavish tea together at Mrs Macfarlane's neat flat on the second floor of a trim red sandstone tenement, just off Byres Road, which boasted a quite astonishing wally close showing an unmistakable influence of the Orient in its design and colours.

The Captain's menage was accounted by the two visitors to be a most desirable and beautifully furbished apartment and was much admired, although in the course of conversation Mrs Campbell remarked that she understood, from what she had read in the papers, that electric lighting was about to be made generally available in that part of the city: and perhaps Mrs Macfarlane could persuade the Captain to make the necessary investment to add its advantages to the many the house already possessed. And Mrs Macfarlane agreed that this would indeed be a subject worth broaching with her husband.

The three ladies got on famously, and their cosy tete-a-tete in the Macfarlane menage was soon followed by a return invitation to Annie Macphail's Plantation home, where over an even more lavish tea a quite exhaustive discussion took place on the merits or otherwise of being domiciled so close to the river with its riveters and hooters and fog: above all, fog: with the balance of opinion finally coming to the conclusion that King's Park and its environs (to take just one example) was, really, quite close enough: and that Mrs Macphail would have to have a word with Dan on that very subject at some suitable occasion in the near future.

The ladies met two weeks later at Lisa Campbell's many-bedded pied-a-terre in Ibrox. The day was carefully planned by their hostess who succeeded in emptying the house of its 12 noisy siblings for the two hours duration of the tea-party by giving them each a jelly-piece and a penny for their fares and sending them on the long, slow tram-trip from Paisley Road West out to Airdrie, and back.

It was a ruse that had saved her sanity before this, and it did not let her down that afternoon. Nor did her catering, for she served a tea even more sumptuous than those proferred at Byres Road and Plantation, conscious that she was entertaining the widow of a baker who would have high standards in that department.

Once more the conversation ranged widely. Mrs Macphail, who was herself one of a large family of five brothers and four sisters and came originally from Bowling, stressed the great value of a house (be it ever so humble a house) somewhere in the country and with a garden of its own, when it came to allowing parents the luxury of a little peace and privacy from the noisy demands of their numerous offspring. Impressed, Mrs Campbell concurred with the Captain's wife's proposal that she really should speak to Dougie about the problem and canvass
his
opinion as to the feasibility of a move when he returned that night from Bowling.

So pleasant had these meetings been for the ladies that nobody thought to call a halt now that the wheel had come full circle, as it were. Indeed Mrs Macfarlane, who was now planning to be hostess a second time, hit upon a novel and really quite exciting idea in relation to their next get-together, and began to make preparations for it.

The Captain was home for the whole of the following weekend and there was a subject which he must — reluctantly — broach with his wife.

Reluctantly because he genuinely hated to do or say anything to upset her in any way at all: but reluctantly also because for all her aura of gentle kindness and unstinting affection, Mrs Macfarlane could, when roused, be found to have considerable backbone when it came to defending her position and her rights as a woman.

“Mery,” he said, tentatively, when the dishes had been cleared away from the tea-table and the two sat quietly at their ease on either side of the parlour fire, “are you planning to have ony more o' these tea-pairties wi' Dan's and Dougie's wives?”

“Why, certainly,” his wife replied, brightly: “such charming ladies, and we do seem to have so much in common — apart from our husbands being shipmates. We really look forward to meeting and I am planning something rather special for next time.”

Para Handy scuffled his slippers on the rug. “Weel, Mery, it iss like this. The laads are upset aboot some o' the things you have aal been talking aboot, and the way they are now being nagged at aboot it aal.”

Mrs Macfarlane bridled. “I am sure I do not know what you mean, Peter.”

“It iss this business of hooses, the three of you agreein' that I should be puttin' in the electric for a stert: I am not made of money, you know that fine.

“And that Dan should mak' a move to get awa' from the ruver chust because it's foggier there than up at Hyndland or Gilmorehill. I neffer heard such umpident nonsense. Dan
likes
the ruver, he wis born and brought up on the ruver and he's no more intention of leavin' it than of emigrating to Canada. If Dougie wass here he would tell you himself. Forbye, Annie Macphail was perfectly content wi' their wee hoose there till you and Lisa Campbell got sterted on her.

“And then you are tryin' to get poor Dougie to move awa' frae Ibrox! Dougie canna
staun'
the country! The laad was brought up in Cowal, for peety's sake, and he saw mair rain in the first ten years of his life than maist men see in their three-score and ten. As he says, at least in the city there's aye somewhere fine and handy to tak' shelter if the heavens open, and usually somewhere that you can find some company to pass the day wi' and get a gless in your haund at the same time.”

Mrs Macfarlane gave her husband a steely look.

“If we wasn't meant to try and better ourselves,” she said with conviction, “the good Lord would not have given us ambition! If you had not had any ambition you would still have been a deckie on a gabbart.”

“That iss not the same at aal,” countered her husband. “It iss in the nature of a man to mak' the best he can of his
career
for the sake of his faimily but it iss neffer the place of the faimily to try to change his
character
, and that iss what the three of you are daein'. Dan would be lost away from the ruver and Dougie would be right oot of place oot o' the toon and if the three of you cairry on like this there wull be no
Vital Spark
and no crew for we'll be at opposite ends o' the country. Forbye, you wouldna like to be put to live somewhere you wassna comfortable wi' yourself, Mery. You wouldna want change chust for the sake of it.”

“Nonsense,” said Mrs Macfarlane sharply, “for a start I moved here from Campbeltown without making a fuss about it when we got married. It is a matter of adjusting and making the best of the circumstances wherever you find yourself, not complaining when there is nothing to complain about. Annie and Lisa have my full support.”

And she retired, frostily, to iron the Captain's shirts in the kitchen ready for his departure the following morning.

When Para Handy returned from an eight day trip to Islay and Jura, he found his wife in subdued mood.

“What ails you, Mery?” he asked anxiously as she greeted him at the door absent-mindedly, and turned away without proferring her cheek for a kiss.

She shook her head.

“Now, now,” said the Captain. “Something's wrong. What have I done — or not done?”

“Oh, it's not you, Peter,” she said at length, sitting on the arm of her chair in the parlour, “it's me. You were right about our tea-parties. We went about them all wrong, trying to outdo each other with the baking and the accessories and then trying to improve the poor woman's house that we were in. Well, we have all learned our lessons.

“This week was my turn to have Lisa and Annie round, but I had the notion to take them up town for a fancy afternoon spree and we went to Miss Cranston's Room de Luxe in Sauchiehall Street.”

She shuddered at the memory.

“I have never been so embarrassed in my life! I knew I had made a mistake from the moment we went through the door!

“The place was full of nothing but society ladies from places like Bearsden or Whitecraigs or Eastwood or Milngavie. There were more fur-coats hanging on the racks at the door than you would find running about in a zoo, and as for the hats!” — she shook her head in disbelief — “the hats! Lisa and Annie and I felt quite out of place among all that finery, for all that we were dressed in what we thought was our
own
.”