Harry's Game Part 19

At the bleak, over-ornate, Milltown gates faces in the crowd were recorded by the Asahi cameras of the military from behind the sandbags on the top of the walls of the Andersonstown bus station. Inside the cemetery the Chief of Staff of the movement, who arrived and departed unseen by those who were hunting him, delivered the graveside oration. They played the "Last Post" while small children in their best clothes played and skipped among the stones that marked the last resting place of other heroes of the Cause.

As weeks and months pa.s.sed by, so increased the adulation and estimation in which Billy Downs was held. They named a club after him, and wove his picture into a big, wide banner. It was some eight feet across, with slots for two poles, one at each end, so that it could be carried high in procession on the marches the Provisionals organized.

The songs followed, sung with the nasal lament in the bars of Andersonstown and Ardoyne to drinkers who sat silent and rapt. They were heavy with sentiment, helping to cement the legend that in Ulster solidifies so quickly. The brave soldier of the songs had been gunned down by the British killer squads while his woman and bairns were round him. It was as his wife had said it would be.

The Secretary of State had refused the request by Billy Downs's wife that she be allowed to attend the funeral of her husband.

Early on the morning of her husband's burial she was transferred from the police station where she had initially been held to Armagh women's prison. She was declared an "A" category prisoner, an automatic cla.s.sification that took into account what she was accused of, not her potential as an escape risk. They flew her, with a prison escort, by Wess.e.x helicopter from Belfast to the parade square of Gough barracks in the old cathedral town. When she stepped out on to the tarmac, half deafened by the rotor blades, and dominated by the armed men round her, she seemed to some who watched a pitiful and harmless creature. She still wore the green coat that she had put on the previous Monday morning to go and get her groceries from the shop on the corner in Ypres Avenue. By the time they had hustled her from the helicopter to the armoured car that waited on the edge of the square, she was s.h.i.+vering. It would be warmer when they reached the cells just down the road, and she would get a mug of tea then.

The Royal Air Force flew Harry out on a Hercules transporter, along with a cargo of freight and two private soldiers going home on compa.s.sionate leave.

The two boys, both in their teens and only just old enough to serve in the province, huddled in their canvas seats away from the tin box wrapped in sacking and strapped down with webbing to the floor of the aircraft. There was a brown label attached to the box, filled in with neat handwriting.

'Says he's a captain.'

'It's the one that did that shooting on Monday morning, and got it himself.'

'Says on here he's got an ME and all.'

'Took one of their big men with him, didn't he?'

'He tracked this joker for weeks. The officers were talking about it. I heard it when I was on dinner-waiting. Lived right in amongst them.'

'This is the first time I've been over, but I've nearly had a full tour, done three and a half months, but I've never seen an IRA man, or anything like one. All we do is patrol, patrol, patrol, but we never find much.'

'Under-cover agent, they called him in the paper.'

'Didn't do him much good, whatever he was.'

That terminated it. They spoke no more of Harry as the plane brought them down to Northolt, where it had all started six weeks earlier.

They buried Harry Brown in the village churchyard close to where his wife's parents lived. By army standards it was a conventional funeral. There was an honour party, immaculate and creased. A staccato volley was fired over the grave. An army chaplain gave a short address by arrangement with the local vicar. In the event it was not much different from the funeral accorded to Billy Downs. Smaller, less stylized, less sentimental, but with all the same ingredients.

There were few civilians present. Mostly soldiers in uniform stiffly upright as the bugler played the final haunting fan There was a wreath from the Prime Minister, and David-, time from his packing to attend. Frost was there too. Both siayn back from the graveside, and neither introduced themselves to th family.

Mary walked away supported by her mother and father. She had had two large brandies before coming, and could tell herself she had borne herself well. As she climbed into the large black car the public side was over. She could weep, leaning heavily on her mother's shoulder.

And she could say, "Why in heaven's name did they choose Harry? He was lovely, precious to me, nothing special to them. They could have chosen a thousand men in front of him. Why did it have to be Harry?'

By the time they had gone, dispersing in their different directions and leaving the covering of flowers over the heaned-up earth, the evening was bearing down on the day. And across the water the truce that runs to heel with the daylight was coming to an end. A few more minutes and the darkness would have engulfed the Falls, the Murph, Andytown and the New Lodge. The young men were preparing to draw their rifles, receive their orders, move out on to the streets. Later a policeman would be killed, and a pub be destroyed by explosives. The life and the death of Billy Downs changed none of that, nor the brief entry into his world of Harry Brown.