1999 (40 page)

The statement Gordon Wilson made at the hospital was as stunning as the bomb itself. He publicly forgave his daughter's killers. “I shall pray for those people tonight and every night.”
³

 

With a heavy heart, Barry drove to Fermanagh to photograph the scene of devastation in Enniskillen. There was still blood on the ground. Dark, drying. Crying out.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.
We
were not supposed to be like this. Why isn't Séamus here to talk to when I need him?

In the midst of so much ruin, no one paid much attention to a tall man who seated himself heavily on a broken slab of cement and covered his face with his hands.

 

Father Alec Reid had arranged a secret meeting, to be hosted by Cardinal Ó Fíaich, between Charles Haughey, Gerry Adams, and John Hume of the SDLP. In spite of Enniskillen Haughey held his nerve and went ahead with the meeting.

 

The usual package arrived from McCoy at Christmas, crossing in the mail with packages to McCoy from Dublin and Clare. In the package to McCoy Barry included photographs of the children—“Look how they are growing!”—and a photograph of the house on Mountjoy Square. “I bought this as an investment and am fixing it up, but don't tell Barbara. It's to be a surprise. Wish you were here to help.”

He sent the same picture and message to Ursula, but without the sentence wishing she could help.

The telephone in the hall rang on Christmas Eve. “Barry, it's your mother. I need an explanation for that photograph you sent.”

“I thought the picture and note were self-explanatory.”

“But of all the houses you might have bought, why Mountjoy Square? Do you realise I once lived just across the square in Gardiner Street? That's where I was going the day the bomb…” She swallowed hard. “Tell me: why are you keeping this a secret from Barbara?”

“I told you, I want to surprise her.”

“A house is not the sort of thing a man keeps secret from his wife. A mistress, perhaps, but not a house.”

Barry smiled.

On the first day of January, 1988, Dublin began the official celebration of its Millennium—ignoring the fact that the first settlement on the south bank of the Liffey had been a small Christian community built long before the Vikings arrived at Wood Quay in the early ninth century.

On the eleventh of the month John Hume, leader of the SDLP, had a secret meeting in Belfast with Gerry Adams of Sinn Féin. They hoped to find common ground for an all-Ireland settlement of the northern question. The meeting had been arranged by Father Alec Reid, who had acted as mediator in various republican feuds.

The two men planned to have further meetings whenever possible.

 

Despite compelling evidence that the six men convicted in the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings were innocent and the forensic material had been fabricated by the police themselves, on January twenty-eighth the Court of Appeal in London upheld their convictions.

The following month Ian Thain, a private in the British army and the only man ever to receive a life sentence for murdering a Catholic in Northern Ireland, was allowed to walk free after serving only two years in jail. During that time the army had kept him on its active service rolls with full pay, and welcomed him back to his old regiment upon his release.

Days later a British soldier shot Aiden McAnespie in the back, in broad daylight, at a security checkpoint. McAnespie, who was on his way to a Gaelic football match, was a popular and well-known member of Sinn Féin. He also was unarmed.

The Progressive Democrats drafted a suggested new constitution for the Republic, dropping any constitutional claim to Northern Ireland and deleting any reference to God.

 

In the Bleeding Horse, Brendan was contemptuous. “The PDs have been intimidated to the point of cringing subservience.”

Luke disagreed. “I don't think it's intimidation. They're courting the political support of all those West Brits who still long in their heart of hearts to be part of Mother England.”

“What about dropping God from the Constitution? How do you explain that?”

“God's going out of fashion,” Luke said flatly.

Patsy was not listening to either of them. As far as he was concerned, political discussions were going out of fashion too. There had been too many for too long and it did not help. Nothing helped.

He stared morosely into his glass.

The conversation dwindled and died.

 

At a UDA press conference in Belfast a spokesman read aloud a statement from the UFF that claimed that “innocent Catholics” had nothing to fear from them.

The item was carried on the six o'clock news the following evening. Later, in the Bleeding Horse, Brendan said, “Was there not some American soldier who claimed the only good Indian was a dead Indian?”

Barry Halloran set down his glass and leaned forward.

His days were consumed either by his photographic career or the house in Mountjoy Square, where he was needed to supervise plumbers and electricians and carpenters when he could get them to come—Ireland being notorious for the laxity of its labouring force—or doing the work himself. His evenings with the children were not always idyllic; they were totally disparate personalities. Brian was a typical fifteen-year-old boy, rebellious and secretive, with more energy than he could use. On the verge of puberty, Trot was a giddy butterfly with skinned knees. Patrick, his father observed to his grandmother on the telephone, was sui generis. “I can't find the key to him, there's no one like him.”

On this particular March night, lonely for a different kind of company, Barry had driven to the Bleeding Horse.
It hasn't changed
, he had thought with relief as he entered the familiar door.
That's why pubs are so great. Not the drink, not even the conversation. Just the fact that they exist unchanged, a fragment of the past caught like sheep's wool in a thornbush.

“If you're implying the loyalist paramilitaries think the only good Catholic is a dead Catholic,” Barry said to Brendan, “I'm sure that's true; at least for some of them. But there's a large element of follow-my-leader in any crowd.” A simile from his own rural past occurred to him. “Danny could tell you: if a bellwether goes through a gap in a hedge the rest of the flock will too.”

Luke cleared his throat. “Danny's not here anymore.”

“I know that.” Barry picked up his glass again. Took a long, slow drink.

“What d'ye hear from Séamus?” asked Patsy.

“Not a lot, he's keeping busy.”

“Séamus always was a great one for keeping busy.”

Barry took another drink.

“And your mother?” queried Brendan. “How is she?”

“Still getting along well.”

Brendan nodded. “Strong woman, your mother.”

“She is that.” Barry set his glass down. Watched the slow dust of time settle over the table.

 

On the authority of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, by the sixth of March a large team had been assembled in Gibraltar, the British colony at the southern tip of Spain. It consisted of twelve members of Britain's Special Air Service, a bomb disposal squad, a score of surveillance specialists, several senior officers in MI5, and an Army Legal Services lawyer. The team was hunting three known members of the IRA, using information gleaned through MI5, MI6, the RUC, and Irish and Spanish police forces.
¹

According to a highly placed informant, possibly within the Gardai itself,
²
the Volunteers—Seán Savage, Daniel McCann, and a young woman, Mairéad Farrell—allegedly were coming to Gibraltar to bomb British fortifications there. The official purpose of the SAS team and their support group was to arrest the three.

It was a typical March afternoon on the peninsula, slightly warmed by that Africa-tinged wind that sometimes comes sweeping across the Strait to caress the famous Rock.

Unaware that their every move was being watched, Farrell and McCann parked a red Ford Fiesta a few hundred yards from the border that separates Spain from Gibraltar, then simply walked across into the town.

Meanwhile the SAS, according to their own testimony, had already spotted Savage's white Renault 5 parked in the town. They could not explain how it had entered Gibraltar undetected. No effort had yet been made to arrest him, nor to examine the car.

After meeting in the town, the Volunteers walked together toward Winston Churchill Blvd. Gibraltar was swarming with casually dressed visitors like themselves, and locals going about their own business. Farrell and her companions sauntered along, chatting together. Three young people out for a day in the sun.

Something must have alerted them. Savage split off from the other two, but it was too late.

A police siren sliced through the air, sending shock waves up the nervous system. Then the staccato of gunfire. As he fell, Seán Savage might have heard the screams of children in a nearby playground.

Farrell and McCann were already being cut to pieces by bullets on the footpath north of him. Farrell was shot five times in the face and a further three times in the back, from a distance of less than five feet.

None of the three was armed.

Neither of their cars contained any explosive device or part thereof.

Within half an hour the first of a mounting cacophony of news reports was issued from London. The IRA had tried to blow up the Rock of Gibraltar. The IRA had engaged in a running gun battle threatening the lives of hundreds of innocent people. British security forces had, at great risk to their own lives, disarmed one or several huge IRA bombs.

As it happened, no car bomb was found until the next day—at the resort of Marbella, miles away. It could just as easily have belonged to ETA, the Basque separatist organisation.

The press in London had a field day. This was as big as Thatcher's victory in the Falklands. An article in the
Daily Express
carried a photograph of Mairéad Farrell with the caption “Queen of Terror, Weaned on Hate!”
³

Shocked and grieving relatives of the slain republicans set off for Gibraltar to identify their loved ones and bring them home for burial. The process took the better part of three weeks. Under heavy political pressure, the various commercial airlines discovered they could not rearrange their schedules to fly the bodies back to Ireland.

After Sinn Féin succeeded in raising twenty-five thousand pounds to pay them, a British firm agreed to do the job using a private jet.

When the bodies of the Gibraltar Three arrived at Dublin Airport, Barry Halloran was amongst the thousands of people waiting on the tarmac, in a driving rainstorm, to welcome them home. Many of those who waited were not republicans; just the plain people of Ireland. Who had long memories.

Television cameras carefully avoided showing the size of the crowd.

The coffins were taken from the plane to the airport mortuary, where a priest said the prayers for the dead. Draped with the Irish tricolour, the three coffins were then placed in hearses and began the long drive home, followed by mourners and members of the press.

As he drove north Barry could feel the anger in himself building.

Shot them in cold blood. A woman too. Shot them lying on the ground. Blew her face off. Left her family with that to think about.

Barry's knuckles were white on the steering wheel.

 

Emotions in the north were running almost as high as they had during the second hunger strike. When the cortege crossed the border it was met by a veritable army of security forces. As they passed through Protestant areas the procession was pelted with bricks, bottles, and obscenities. The security forces made no effort to intervene. But when a howling horde ran toward Barry's car he rolled the window down and aimed his camera at them. “Smile, please!” he called jauntily.

They turned and ran the other way.

It was common for republican funerals in the north to be hijacked. Since the onset of the Troubles, time and again members of the RUC had blocked funeral processions, pulled mourners off the road, even refused to allow access to churches and cemeteries. This time was no different. The police closed the main road into Belfast to all but the hearses and the cars carrying the immediate families. Strenuous efforts were made to convince everyone else to go back. Preferably all the way to Dublin.

Barry Halloran knew Belfast too well to be misdirected. Through a series of lightless laneways and claustrophobic little streets where boarded-up windows watched like blind eyes, he made his way into the city and checked into one of his usual hotels.

He did not ring home to tell Barbara he had arrived safely. He never rang Harold's Cross from a hotel in Northern Ireland anymore. Instead he placed a prearranged phone call from a public phone box to a neutral acquaintance, and had that person notify Barbara.

British army listening posts, bristling with the latest electronic eavesdropping equipment, were in place all along the border and on the taller buildings around Belfast and Derry.

 

The RUC had promised the relatives of the Gibraltar Three that they would be buried in peace, provided the IRA refrained from firing a volley of honour over the graves. On the afternoon of March sixteenth the funeral cortege set out for Milltown Cemetery in West Belfast. The procession following the hearses stretched for almost a mile. A lone piper playing “The Minstrel Boy” was almost drowned out by the noise from a British army helicopter hovering directly overhead.

The world's media was in attendance too. Reporters and photographers fought ordinary mourners for every scrap of available space. But the assembled crowd recognised Barry Halloran; he was one of their own. They let him pass.

The day was bitterly cold, but it always seemed cold in Milltown Cemetery. The republican dead who lay in their soldierly ranks did not sleep at peace. Not yet.

Barry had brought only one camera. He was wearing it on a strap around his neck, partially concealed by the overcoat he never buttoned. He would take pictures later; not now. The ancient Irish reverence for the ceremony of committal to the earth was deeply ingrained in him.