Blackwatertown. Paul Waters
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more trouble. Or go parading without your uniform.’ She giggled and waved him off.
*
Macken set off in a happy daze. She had materialised out of the mist like some pale sprite to bewitch him. Her name was Aoife. Eee-faa. It sounded like a sigh of contentment. His head was away with the fairies and his heart was beating fast although he had only started walking. She had banished the cold from his body. He felt life pulsing through him.
As he approached Blackwatertown, low hills and hedges and high ditches opened out onto a broad flood meadow. On his right, the snaggly drear-grey teeth of a graveyard were spotted with lichen in shockingly bright orange and white. Their carved epitaphs did not give away whether the occupants were Catholic or Protestant. Like the headstones, they seemed to lean both ways.
I must be nearly there, he thought. A screen of trees hid what Macken guessed must be the Blackwater river. Which means I’m in Tyrone, he thought, looking east towards the old frontier. He breathed in the feeling of freedom beyond the Pale. He felt that he could turn around and keep walking. There was still time. All quiet. Just the tiny sounds of the leaves of the ash trees brushing against each other, and the lowing of unseen cattle. Nobody around. Just us, thought Macken, acknowledging the dead beside him. Must be Catholic, he decided, this far out of town. Wrong side of the tracks. Across the county line. Wrong side of the river.
Macken walked on and noticed a couple of cars on the bridge. There was a policeman at the far end. No one seemed to be in a hurry. It looked like one of those endless chats country people stop in the middle of the road to engage in. Odd to see a checkpoint, thought Macken. Maybe there’s been an accident. He looked over the parapet at the peat-brown water flowing underneath. Sycamore branches drooped from the bank, tips dipping into the current, setting swirling eddies corkscrewing downstream. Otherwise, the dark water flowed smooth and supple like the hide of a horse.
There was a sudden ding-dinging behind him. He turned in surprise as the lady of the lake wobbled her bicycle to a halt beside him, her old suitcase lashed precariously onto a rear carrier. Her emerald scarf was stuffed into the basket on the handlebars. Her hair, bright in daylight, was dishevelled from her ride. She brushed a wayward twist of auburn away from green eyes that seemed to be twinkling specially for him.
‘Aoife Penny,’ he smiled. ‘Didn’t expect to see you so soon.’
‘Ach, when you left you took my artistic inspiration with you. And here you are in trouble again already.’
Macken was puzzled and delighted all at once.
‘What do you mean? You’re the one having difficulty staying upright.’
‘Oh, is that right? Are you ready to flaunt your contraband to your colleague up ahead?’
‘Sure, these fish could have come from anywhere. They wouldn’t suspect a police officer, would they?’
‘For a newcomer, you’re very sure of yourself. But in the light of your courageousness with the stick, I’ll carry them through for you.’
I find it impossible to refuse her, thought Macken, unsure if he was humouring her or under a spell. He hid the sack of fish under her scarf.
‘Will I get them back on the other side?’
Aoife adopted an innocent look. ‘I don’t know. I’ll need compensation for having my morning so shockingly disrupted.
‘And for being drawn into dishonesty and corruption. By a policeman of all people.’
Then her mouth dipped into something between a frown and a pout.
‘And for being treated so rudely by someone I thought was a gentleman.’
Macken was lost again.
‘You never introduced yourself,’ she laughed. ‘Unless you expect me to make up a name, based on what I’ve seen of you so far?’
‘It’s Macken.’
She raised her eyebrows.
‘Just Macken.’
*
Aoife rang her bell as she reached the sentry. As the policeman turned towards her suitcase, Macken saw her put a finger to her lips and lean forward conspiratorially. She and the sentry hunched over the bicycle’s basket, as she whispered in his ear. He waved her on with a broad smile.
Macken walked on. The sentry was rubbing his hands, from satisfaction by the look of it, rather than the temperature. He was a tall young man, pale skin and pale ginger hair. His pointy face hinted at inner eagerness, if only he possessed the intelligence to decide for himself which direction to go. The sharp edge of his jaw was blood-flecked from an early morning scrape of blade in cold water.
He looked Macken up and down. No warm welcome. ‘The new man? Thought you’d be here last night.’
Macken came back down from fairyland with a bump. This is what happens when you lose your stripes, he thought.
‘I report for duty this morning. It’s Macken, by the way. Hello.’
‘Well, good morning to you too. You’ll find the barracks up the road.’
Looks like he’s not had much sleep either, thought Macken. He felt there was something familiar about the slight man trying to make himself seem larger in the uniform.
‘Is this the usual thing,’ asked Macken, ‘to have a checkpoint here?’
‘Ah, no. We’re very quiet. Not like where you’ve come from.’
Good news spreads fast, thought Macken sourly.
The sentry carried on: ‘We had reports of manoeuvring in the woods. It’s just a precaution.’
‘And who’d be on manoeuvres round here?’ asked Macken.
‘Republicans. Free Staters from over the border, maybe.’
‘I thought we were done with all that. I hadn’t pegged Blackwatertown as a hotbed of insurrection.’ Macken cocked his head, as if considering it, then looked the other policeman in the eye. ‘Sounds more like poachers to me, Constable…’
‘Cedric Andrews,’ said the checkpoint guard, reddening.
Macken nodded. One puzzle solved. His guardian angel had been right. He looked for her, but she was gone.
CHAPTER 6
Blackwatertown was little more than a street, with only a few side roads before you were out the other side and into fields again. The dull corridor of grey buildings managed to impose a grimness despite the green countryside around it. Less of a town than a village, and most likely somewhere he could be forgotten about.
It had been somewhere once, though. The Blackwater river flowed into the vast Lough Neagh in the centre of Ulster. As an angler, Macken knew his rivers. The Blackwater was the county boundary between Armagh and its western neighbour Tyrone. Centuries ago, it had marked the furthest edge of English control in Ulster. Which would explain the ruined castle, thought Macken. Hadn’t there been some historic punch-up nearby? Wonder who won? Must have been us, he decided. Because if the other lot had, they’d still be marching to remind us.
All quiet now. No excitement of any kind.
To Macken’s left, a huddle of sheds spoilt the view of the riverbank and a small slipway. A small, black strip of wood above its front door betrayed the purpose of the first blank-faced house. In barely legible letters, it read: The Bridge Bar, Leonard Maginnislicensee. I’ve reached the bright lights now and no mistake, thought Macken.
High, windowless storehouse walls faced the dead public house. And from there, the drab lines of Blackwatertown’s main road slunk between terraced houses, yard