59

Sublime Tobacco

Once breakfast was finished, the Captain felt in his pocket for his pipe, then reached into his overhead locker and pulled out a yellow oilskin tobacco pouch. Opening it, Para Handy stared disbelievingly into its interior, sighed, and shook his head in resignation.

“My chove,” he said: “I chust do not know where the tobacco goes and that iss a fact. I could have sworn there wass a good two or three oonces left when I put her away last night, but now here she iss quite ass empty ass Old Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard…” And he paused at this point to glance suspiciously across the table at the Vital Spark’s Engineer, who was the only other smoker on the vessel.

“You needna look at me like that,” said that worthy, quite indignantly, pushing his empty breakfast plate away and picking up his mug of tea. “Ah widna use the rubbish that you smoke tae smoke a finnan haddie. Ah’ve mair respect for ma throat. You call that tobacco? Ye’d be as weel to stick your heid doon the lum o’ the shup and tak’ a few deep breaths. Ah’m sure that wid be better for ye.”

Para Handy ignored him.

“It’s you that iss lucky you are not a smoker, Dougie,” he said to the Mate somewhat enviously. “You chust wudna believe the expense of it!”

“Oh yes I would,” said the Mate gloomily, with thoughts of the large family his wages had to support uppermost in his mind. “I most certainly would: it’s only the cost that stops me, otherwise I’d be puffin’ awa’ wi’ the rest of you. It wass only getting merried that went and put a stop to my smoking. When I wass younger I had a different kind of a pipe for every day of the week.”

“Smokin’ wass cheaper then, though,” continued the Captain, as he salvaged the last few shreds of tobacco from his pouch, laid them carefully into the bowl of his pipe, and reached for a match. “Folk were more wulling to trate you, or to share if you were oot of the makin’s yourself” — and here he paused to stare meaningfully at Macphail, who was re-filling his own pipe from a well-stocked pouch, but the Engineer paid no heed — “whereas nooadays it’s such a price!

“If you’re smokin’ your own tobacco, aal you’re thinkin’ aboot iss the expense of it, and you put scarcely enough in your pipe to get it going. Whiles if you’re in company where a baccy tin or a pooch iss passing roond, on the ither hand, and so you’re smokin’ someone else’s, then your pipe iss rammed that tight it wullna draw!”

Sunny Jim, who preferred to spend what surplus he could glean from his wages on more rewarding indulgences such as favours or ice-cream sundaes for his girl-of-the-moment, chuckled quietly and observed: “Weel, you could save a lot o’ money by buying your vestas from thon jenny-a’-thing shop at Blairmore where you got them at last week!”

The puffer had been bound for Ardentinny for oak-bark from the forestry plantations in Glenfinnart when, just as they were abreast of the pier at Blairmore, the Captain had realised that he was out of matches — and remembered also that there was no shop of any decription at Ardentinny.

It was the work of just a few minutes to put in to the pier and from there Sunny Jim had been dispatched to the general store to purchase a carton containing two dozen large boxes of matches. The transaction completed, the puffer continued on her way and three miles further on put inshore and beached as close to the road as she could, close beside Ardentinny’s little church, and waited for the arrival of the first forestry dray with its load of oak-bark.

Captain and Engineer, in a rare moment of camaraderie, had sat themselves side-by-side on the main-hatch in the warm afternoon sun and filled their pipes.

Para Handy passed the newly-bought carton of vestas to Macphail, who took out one of the boxes, carefully extracted a match, and struck it on the side of the box. There was a slight crackle, a momentary spark, but nothing more. He tried again. And again. Exasparated, Macphail threw the dud match away and selected another. The same scenario was repeated. He tried a third. The same again. Cursing, he tried another box, and then another and another, but always with the same negative result.

Para Handy, who had been impatiently waiting to get his own pipe lit, could finally wait no longer and snatched the carton of boxes from the Engineer’s hands. “You couldna light a fire wi’ a can o’ kerosene, Dan,” he complained testily: “see the metches here, you chust havna the knack for them at aal.”

But the Captain fared no better than the Engineer had done, and in disgust Macphail finally went aft to the engine-room and put a taper into the red-hot coals in the furnace, and from that the two men lit their pipes.

Para Handy studied the carton and its worthless boxes of vestas contemptuously.

“Jum!” he shouted.

Sunny Jim, who was down below peeling potatos, came scrambling up on deck a moment later.

“Jum,” said the Captain, “I want you to tak’ this dam’ carton o’ vestas back to Cherlie Paterson’s shop at Blairmore. Tell him they wullna strike at aal, I want either my money back or else a new carton wi’ boxes in it that work.”

Jim’s protests at being forced into a six-mile round trip over such a relative triviality were disregarded and the puffer’s young hand soon found himself stepping out along the coast road with the worthless carton under his arm. His annoyance at being sent on such a trifling errand soon vanished, for it was a most beautiful afternoon, Loch Long was at its spectacular best, the birds were in full song and the wild flowers bordering the roadside were at their colourful zenith — and he was not having to trim oak-bark in a dusty, sweltering hold.

When Sunny Jim presented himself at the store in Blairmore and disclosed the nature of his errand, the proprietor was totally unimpressed.

“There’s naething wrang wi’ my vestas,” he said angrily, “You tell Peter Macfarlane that.”

“But they wullna light!” protested Jim.

“Willna light?” exploded Paterson. “See me wan o’ they boxes and I’ll show you whether they light or not,” and he grabbed the carton, took out a box, extracted a match and then, leaning forward slightly as he did so, struck it vigorously on the seat of his trousers.

The match immediately burst into flame.

“See whit I mean?” roared the proprietor.

“Ah see whit you mean,” replied Sunny Jim quietly, “but I dinna think either Para Handy or Dan Macphail ha’e ony intention of walking six miles from Ardentinny and back jist to strike a match on the seat of your breeks every time they want a smoke.”

He got his new carton.

The Captain laughed at the memory of that. “Aye, you did weel there, Jum: I wush I’d been wi’ you for the sake of seeing the expression on Cherlie Paterson’s face!

“And you’d have enjoyed seein’ the expression on Dan’s face yon time we bumped intae thon yat the Blue Dragon up at Eisdale. We bumped into her in more ways than wan, in fact, for we came into the wee harbour just efter derk, no’ expecting ony ither boats to be there, and towing our own dinghy, for we had a deck cairgo of a flittin’. Here and did we no’ clatter the yat wi’ the dinghy ass we came in.

“The owner wass on deck in a flash, but when he saw there wass no damage done he couldna have been nicer aboot it, and invited us aal on board for a refreshment.”

The Engineer, who had been twisting uncomfortably in his seat, said firmly “Dinna you say anither word, Peter, that wis a lot o’ years ago, and it’s not a very interestin’ baur onyway.”

“Oh, I’m no so sure aboot that,” replied the Captain. “We will let Jum be the judge!

“Onyway, Jum, efter he’d given us a gless wi’ something warmin’ in it, the yat skipper passed roond a box o’ big Havana cigars for us to try. I said no, thanks, if he didna mind I would stick wi’ the pipe — but Dan here, who’d neffer smoked a cigar in his naitural, picked oot the biggest wan in the box and lit it up quite jocco.

“Two meenits and he wass chust ass green in the face ass the gress on midsummer day, and two meenits more and he wass up and oot the cabin like a lamplighter and aal we could hear wass him bein’ no weel ower the side o’ the yat! It wass a while before Dougie and me let him forget aboot that, I can tell you: and I had to feenish his dram for him that night, too!”

“Och, he’s so smairt,” said the Engineer, both embarrassed and petulant at once. “Jist ask him aboot the time we wis cairrying the shows for the Tarbert Fair from Brodick, where they’d been for the week afore that, over to Loch Fyne.

“Wan o’ the sideshows for the Fair wis a man that had a kind of a trained monkey, that could sit on a perch and stand on its haun’s, and jump through girrs, and put on a wee bit of a cloak and tak’ it off again, and go in among the folk on the end of a leash wi’ a kind of a silver cup in its haun’s tae collect the pennies.”

It was now the Captain’s turn to look uncomfortable. “What on earth is the point of draggin’ up old stories this way,” he asked Macphail with some fervour, but the Engineer continued as if there had been no interruption.

“Para Handy wis fairly taken wi’ the monkey,” he said: “and wis aye gettin’ the man that owned it too pit it through its paces as we crossed the tap o’ Kilbrannan Soond and headed up Loch Fyne.

“When the monkey wis given a wee tin drum and a stick tae bang it with, Para Handy wis that tickled he stuck his pipe in his mooth so he’d baith haun’s free to slap his thighs, for he wis laughin’ till he wis sair.

“At that the monkey leapt onto his shouthers, pulled the pipe frae his mooth, and went and sat on the side of the vessel and tried tae smoke it itself! Para Handy very near fell aff of the main-hatch he wis laughing that mich, watching the beast tryin’ tae imitate whit he’d been dae’ing.

“He didna laugh long! The monkey near choked on the baccy smoke and it pulled the pipe oot of its mooth quicker than it had put it in, looked at it a moment with whit ye’d hae sworn wis an expression of disgust — and then hurled Para Handy’s best and only genuine and original meer-schaum ower the side o’ the shup and into the Loch. So it wis an expensive joke for the Captain that day!”

“Well,” said Jim with conviction, “If I wis ever tempted to stert smokin’ I’d jist have to remind masel’ aboot the mess you two cloons manage tae get yoursel’s intae. It’s my considered opinion ye’re naethin’ but a pair of eejits tae cairry on wi’ the pipes at aal. They seem to involve ye in an awful lot of aggravation and expense, and I canna see that it’s worth it for the sake of a whiff of tobacco.”

“Ah,” said Paa Handy dreamily, “but that iss where you are aal wrong, Jum. Tobacco is sublime — chust sublime. If Dougie wass here he would tell you that himself…”

FACTNOTE

A ‘jenny-a’-thing’ was, of course, a general store which sold just about everything (as the cliché has it) from a needle to an anchor. They were the hub around which very many of the more remote rural communities revolved, and in isolated parts of the Highlands and the rural west they still are today.

The pier at Blairmore, on the Cowal coast at the entrance to Loch Long, is one of the few remaining piers on the firth and sea-lochs of the Clyde which are still serviceable and, more importantly, licensed to serve. Our last surviving paddler, the Waverley, calls occasionally at Blairmore to pick up passengers for an evening cruise to Lochgoilhead or Arrochar. Ardentinny never had a pier: Passengers were embarked or disembarked from the steamers (by prior arrangement, or by hailing them as they passed) by flitboat.

The Blue Dragon (from 1892 till 1904) and her successor Blue Dragon II (1905 till 1913) were owned by a quite remarkable English schoolmaster and yachtsman, C C Lynam.

Blue Dragon was a tiny craft, just 25ft overall, yet from the modest beginnings of day-excursions along the south coast of England Lynam sailed her further and further north and became a regular visitor not just in summer, but during winter holidays as well, to the Hebrides and West Highlands.

In the larger Blue Dragon II Lynam undertook voyages not just to Orkney and Shetland, but over to Bergen and then north to the North Cape and the midnight sun. She was a two-masted yawl of 43ft overall with roomy cabin-space and six berths. In 1905 she cost him just £300!

Three volumes describing his voyages (all well-illustrated and comprehensive but highly idiosyncratic, not to say eccentric) were published between 1908 and 1913. Now very scarce they are much prized by bibliophiles as remarkable accounts of Edwardian maritime adventure, and the attitudes and amenities of the age.

An encounter with a puffer, her engineer and one of the yacht’s cigars is indeed related in Lynam’s chronicles!

Meerschaum pipes, made from a fine white clay (the word itself derives from the German for sea-foam) were then among the most highly regarded of smoking implements and the bowls were almost always carved or moulded into intricate and decorative shapes such as character or caricature heads of men or women, whether historical or imaginary: or of beasts of myth, legend or fact.

Good early meerschaums are sought-after by collectors: and the Captain would certainly not have been happy to lose his!