Mary, Queen O'Leith calls last orders after 25-year reign

Published on Saturday 14 March 2009 18:59

I'm 70. I would lie, but I've got a twin sister, 10 minutes older, and she bloody well tells everybody her age

GASTROPUBS, sports bars and kiddy-friendly brasseries are, I think, a force for good. I yield to no man in my enjoyment of a nice smoked haddock, asparagus and prosciutto risotto served in the vicinity of a soft-play area and accompanied by a warm pint of Old Stoatstrangler. But there are times when you have a drouth and only a proper boozer will do.

The Port O'Leith is one of Scotland's best-loved boozers. As the name suggests, it is definitely a Leith establishment, and Leith is as much a state of mind as a place. Working class at heart, hedonistic, scuzzily creative, a bit aggressive maybe, it's almost as though, millennia ago, when the tectonic plates shifted, a chunk of Glasgow broke away and got stuck by the Firth of Forth.

For 25 years, the Port O'Leith has been run by Mary Moriarty, a douce and slender woman dressed neatly in black, nails pink, hair white and piled high. She is sometimes likened to Bet Lynch, but a better comparison is her namesake, Mary Queen Of Scots, who arrived in Leith from France in 1561. Mary Moriarty is queenly with a hint of something earthy beneath, and arrived here from Haddington in 1984. She had intended to run the pub for three years and then emigrate to the US, but first she took over the Port O'Leith and then it took over her. She became addicted to the job.

Now, though, she has announced her retirement. "If I don't leave now," she says, "I think I would get carried out in a box." What age is she? "I'm 70. I would lie, but I've got a twin sister, 10 minutes older, and she bloody well tells everybody her age."

Come early April, Moriarty's name will be taken down from above the door and she will walk out for the last time as landlady. "I think it will be quite a wrench, she says. "People have said I should just hire a manager and step back a bit. But I know myself. I'd still be here every day until two in the morning, mopping the floor and making sure the toilets are clean. No, the only thing to do is cut myself off completely."

She'll still come in, though, to play bridge and drink vodka-soda, and even when she's not here in body she will be so in effigy. High in one corner there's a ship's figurehead sculpted to look like her. It's been there 20 years and she plans to leave it when she goes. "Look at the eyes," she says, "they're staring straight at the till."

The Port O'Leith has a nautical feel. Over the years it has been decorated by the many sailors who have docked nearby. It is a long-standing tradition to leave behind your ship's flag, which Moriarty then attaches to the ceiling. There are hundreds of them up there, a kaleidoscope of anchors, knots and Union Jacks. There are also plenty of life-preservers, a bisected mannequin in a navy cap, and studded above the till hundreds of foreign coins. All this stuff has the random feel of flotsam washed into the pub on a tidal wave of thirsty sailors and left behind when they roll out sated and sloshed.

It's noon when I visit but there are already a couple of drunk young women at the bar. The Port O'Leith opens at nine, and they've been here since then, but they were somewhere before that's open from six. One is deciding what to order: "I love Aftershock. It makes my jaw go funny. But I need something with a bit more alcohol in it. A black sambuca, please."

Moriarty smiles. "Women are more fun than men. They'll dance and sing along. Men are, well, dull might be the word."

Legend has it that the Port O'Leith used to have go-go dancers, and that when the pub shut for the night, all the dockers would pile into the local chippies covered in glitter from the girls. But Moriarty says this isn't the case. "We do get folk dancing on the bar, but they don't get paid for it."

A Westie wearing a blue neckerchief trots past and sniffs behind the bar. A havering red-top hack crows about his part in the downfall of David Mellor. A swaying punter on his way to the toilet eyes my cup of coffee with suspicion and offers a tribute to Moriarty: "Mary is an anchor in this community. When she goes, it'll be a sad loss to Leith."

I notice a framed Scotsman crossword behind the bar. "A guy called Percy that used to drink in here all the time," says the barman, "this was the crossword he was doing when he died of a heart attack."

He points to the chair where the man was sitting and hands me down the puzzle. Percy only had seven clues left, and seems to have been midway through filling in 14 down – "Lotuseaters"– when he died.

The Port O'Leith serves stories as well as pints. You won't hang around for long before you get to hear about the Russian fishing crew who turned up one morning and repaid Moriarty for her hospitality with a gigantic halibut too large for her fridge. Or the time during the Festival that the Archaos circus troupe became regulars. "The treasurer used to dig a hole in Leith Links and bury their takings for the night," says Moriarty. "Then she'd have a few drinks in here and couldn't remember where she'd bloody well buried them."

Another regular, a man known as "Sodjer", died last year and his photograph is behind the bar. He seems to have been held in high regard, even though he used to try to sneak in his own carry-out. "I don't think I ever made out a word he said," says Moriarty, "but he laughed after every sentence, and you just laughed along with him. He had his own wee corner that he'd elbow folk out the road to get into."

The last thing I see Moriarty do before I head back out on to Constitution Street, is wash down a pinch of snuff with a glass of lager. For the road, though, how about one final story? She indulges me.

"One time, a man in his early fifties, crew on a ship, was in. He said, 'Is this a gay pub?' Well, I looked round to see who was in, wondering if he had maybe been propositioned in the toilets. And I said, 'Well, no. Why, are you homophobic?'"

Mary Moriarty pauses, screws up her eyes with hilarity, and delivers the man's reply. "'No,' he said. 'I'm from Falkirk.'"