1999 (14 page)

There was a sudden chill in the air. Danny looked alarmed.

“I just sat in the corner and read my newspaper,” Luke went on. “It was nothing to do with me.”

“Did you question the bartender after they left?”

“He's of the same opinion I am, Barry. Nothing specific, you understand. Just a feeling.”

McCoy asked, “What about you, Danny?”

“I wasn't here,” the Kerry man said quickly.

Business was bad in the Bleeding Horse that night. The regular customers came in, stayed long enough to hear what had happened, looked appraisingly at those around them—or avoided looking at them—and left earlier than usual.

“I doubt if the new man from Belfast will call in now,” Barry told McCoy. “Word gets around fast.”

“Aye.”

“We might as well do our drinking at home then.”

“Aye,” McCoy agreed with a sigh of resignation.

Barry drove home slowly, lost in thought until he realised that McCoy was talking to him.

“You believe that, Seventeen? One of the pub regulars could be an informer?”

“What? Oh…it's a possibility. There've been informers in this country since the first Queen Elizabeth began bribing the Irish to betray one another. The question is, how should we deal with them?”

“There's no question about it,” said McCoy. “Suppose you found out tomorrow that a man you'd been drinking with tonight had informed on you—or on me. The IRA's not a democracy, Seventeen, it's an army, and the troops take orders. They may come with a hand on the shoulder or a word in the ear, but they're orders and there's no arguing. Volunteers do as they're told. It's our greatest strength.”

Ursula was troubled by the tension she felt in the house.
So much arguing can't be good for the baby. People think they don't understand anything at that age, but they do. They're like animals, they pick up on everything.

“I think it's time I went back to Clare,” she told Barbara. “You're under a strain, having your mother-in-law in the house.”

“I enjoy having you here,” the young woman protested. Her eyes contradicted her words.

“That's very kind of you, Barbara,” Ursula said, “but I've been away from my horses too long. I must start training up the youngsters for sale next spring.”

“Surely you don't still ride!”

Ursula's eyes flashed. “Of course I still ride.”

“I mean, well…a woman in her early sixties…”

“…is a woman in her early sixties,” Ursula snapped. “Neither helpless nor dysfunctional, as you will find out for yourself someday, God willing.”

Barbara had a gift for saying insulting things in an innocent way, as if she did not know they were insulting. But she knew when she was caught. “I thought you hired people for that sort of thing,” she said sulkily.

“I employ farm labour, but I prepare my own horses. I can't afford to pay an expensive trainer, and besides, I love them and they know it. Every living thing responds to love,” Ursula added, hoping Barbara would get the message.

Love my son. Give him what he needs.

Barry took his mother to the train station. He did not try to dissuade her from leaving, but he was sorry to see her go. When they were together he was aware there were things unsaid between them, things that should be said. Yet he did not know what they were or how to start the conversation.

As he waited with her on the train platform she asked abruptly, “Do you still have Papa's rifle?”

“I do of course.”

“But you've never gone back to active service.”

“I have not.”

She knew there was no point in asking him for an explanation. Like herself, Barry kept his own counsel.

Ursula Halloran had been an Irish republican for as long as she could remember. She had actively served in the cause of the Republic; she had been worried and upset and enormously proud when her only child ran off to follow in her footsteps. She had fully expected that the rage she saw in him following Bloody Sunday would erupt into violence. Her only concern had been for his safety. When he appeared to do nothing Ursula had been surprised. And relieved. And disappointed.

Since the Civil War Ireland had been fractured in many ways. So had the island's inhabitants. Partition was an outward symbol of a deep inward divide. In both north and south many people gave lip service to the politically acceptable line while feeling very differently in their hidden hearts.

 

In September the body of James Joseph Brown, a Catholic from Derry whose wife was expecting their first child, was found dumped in the Foyle Road. The IRA issued a statement alleging Brown had attempted to infiltrate the organisation, and had been passing information to the British since 1971. It was further claimed that Brown had received a total of 120 pounds sterling, a considerable sum, for his information.

The following month Ronald Fletcher, a Protestant from East Belfast, was killed when a bomb planted by the Ulster Defence Association—or the Ulster Freedom Fighters, depending on who one spoke to—exploded in the doorway of Wilson's Bar on the Upper Newtownards Road. Fletcher, an innocent bystander, was killed when the wall collapsed on him.

On Halloween the IRA hijacked a helicopter and forced the pilot to land in the exercise yard of Dublin's Mountjoy Prison. Three leading Provos were snatched to freedom in an operation planned to the split second.

In November a Catholic pensioner called Francis McNelis was killed by a UVF bomb in the Avenue Bar, close to Belfast city centre. Almost every day that month someone was murdered. Catholic or Protestant, civilian or paramilitary or member of the security forces, no one in Northern Ireland was exempt from a sudden, violent end.

During a meeting of the Northern Ireland Assembly on the fifth of December fighting broke out in the chamber. Four moderate Unionists were physically attacked by members of Vanguard and the DUP. Police eventually removed the attackers to the accompaniment of jeers from the crowd gathered outside.

The Assembly was close to collapse.

On the sixth, at an English civil service college called Sunningdale, a conference was held between representatives of the British and Irish governments. An agreement was drawn up stipulating that the unification of Ireland could only take place with the consent of the majority in Northern Ireland. In addition, a Council of Ireland was to be established to promote north-south economic cooperation.

The mere mention of cooperation with the Republic evoked paroxysms of anger among loyalists.

 

On the first of January 1974 a new power-sharing Northern Ireland Executive took office at Stormont, led by Brian Faulkner—a relatively moderate Unionist politician who had justified internment by saying, “We are, quite simply, at war with the terrorists and in a state of war many sacrifices have to be made.”
¹

The Usual Suspects were not impressed by the new regime. “It won't make no difference,” Patsy said. “You can change the label on a tin of beans but it's still beans.”

“Amen,” agreed McCoy.

“Apart from being a supporter of Ian Paisley, Faulkner seems like an intelligent man,” said Brendan. “Perhaps we should give him a chance before we pass judgement.”

Danny responded with a derisive sneer. “We don't have to give him a chance. He's a politician, and we know what they are. We got plenty of that breed down here. All mouth and no trousers.”

 

The Usual Suspects were not alone in their view of the new Executive. A fresh outbreak of violence followed its establishment. The death toll mounted. By 1974 Northern Ireland was firmly labelled in the minds of news editors abroad as “reliable.” If nothing more exciting was happening one could always count on the Irish situation to provide a hard news story or dramatic photographs.

The credit on some of the most stark photos was “Barry Halloran.”

Several times a week that year Barry put his cameras, tripod, and a couple of holdalls into the boot of the Austin Healey and drove north, to Belfast or Newry or Derry. He never crossed the border without first stopping in a hotel in Dundalk and taking certain precautions. To his knowledge no constabulary possessed a photograph of him, since he had never been arrested, yet there were those in the north who would remember him from days long past.

Barry made certain that the tall red-haired man who stood out in any crowd in the Republic was never seen in Northern Ireland. He travelled with several sets of clothing that ran the gamut from a nearly new three-piece suit to a torn sweater and dingy dungarees. The grooming kit that held his razor and aftershave also contained materials to change the colour of his hair, rolls of cotton to fill out his cheeks, bits of wax and spirit gum, and three pairs of spectacles with different frames, but plain glass lenses.

To augment his disguises he borrowed freely from the Usual Suspects, assuming Danny's wide-legged swagger, or Luke's rounded shoulders, or Patsy's habit of rubbing his thumb along his jawbone. He could even alter his posture so that he appeared shorter than he really was.

When he left the hotel in Dundalk he might be any of half a dozen different men—none of them resembling the real Barry Halloran.

His extensive knowledge of Northern Ireland served him well. He knew the hot spots, the flash points, instinctively. The Orange marches, when loyalists in their thousands paraded through nationalist neighbourhoods in acts of blatant triumphalism, attracted trouble like a magnet. But so did the crowded pubs—Protestant or Catholic—on a Friday night, or the lonely streets in a poor neighbourhood—Catholic or Protestant—where discontent sowed seeds of violence.

Attempting to cover the war in Northern Ireland—and this was a war; only the wilfully uninformed believed otherwise—was a near impossibility for print journalists and photojournalists alike. There was never time for reflection. Things that made no sense from any rational perspective were everyday occurrences. Violence erupted out of nowhere and then melted away before anyone could determine its actual cause or the identity of the protagonists. Ensnarled in chaos, Barry ran, crouched, scrambled over walls, was alternately terrified and furious, reloaded the camera, flattened himself into doorways, observed barbaric cruelty on both sides and occasional moments of touching heroism as well, swore aloud, beat an impotent fist against a closed door, slept in his clothes, accepted a cup of tea from strangers, strove day after day to tell the story with some degree of objectivity. Knew that he failed far more often than he succeeded. But he tried.

That's all any of us can do. Try.

Barry was not alone in attempting the impossible. War correspondents with experience in conflicts from the former U.S.S.R. to Afghanistan and Lebanon were being sent to Belfast now. Male and female alike, many arrived complete with helmets, flak jackets, and their own preconceived ideas about “Ireland.”

The north quickly disabused them.

At the end of the day Barry often joined some of them in a hotel bar, or one of the dark little pubs frequented by the “old hands.” For a few hours he could recapture the sense of camaraderie that had so appealed to him in the Army. He and his fellow journalists belonged to a confraternity that comprehended both more and less of what was going on than the combatants in the eye of the storm.

Sometimes—always without success—the newcomers tried to make sense of the situation in Northern Ireland to one another. The old hands, Barry among them, did not even try.

It was too frustrating.

When the number of Protestants killed began to exceed that of Catholics, Barry's photographs reflected the change in statistics. He made no attempt to disguise the brutality of either side but let the pictures speak for themselves.

His lens captured the stern immobility of two men in black balaclavas flanking the open coffin of a third man whose rosary was strung through his fingers. The shocked expression of a little girl crouching beside a pile of rubble from which a thin stream of blood trickled. The agonised grimace of a Protestant man helping to carry his best friend's coffin. Bypassers studiously ignoring the fact that armed British soldiers were questioning a terrified woman while her small son clung to her hand. The pathetic vulnerability of two naked feet visible from beneath the sheet that covered a body dumped on the side of the road.

In March Barry took a candid portrait of Merlyn Rees, the newly appointed secretary of state for Northern Ireland. Barry tellingly photographed Rees surrounded by members of the Ulster Workers Council, which had been founded the year before. The UWC was vehemently opposed to any sort of power sharing. Their grim expressions did not bode well for the future.

Barry, complete with two days' growth of stubble and a beer belly swelling beneath his clothes, slipped among them to take “snapshots” of the occasion. Many UWC members were doing the same thing. One or two even offered to buy him a drink later. He cheerfully bought his share of rounds in the nearest loyalist pub while condemning the IRA in a voice distorted by the strip of wax inside his lower lip.

His Merlyn Rees photographs were purchased by all the international news services.

Barbara was not happy about Barry's time across the border. “Surely there are enough subjects for you here in the Republic, and you'd be a lot safer.”

“I'm safe as long as I do my work and mind my business.”

“Why does your business have to be violence?”

“Those are the pictures editors want,” he told her.

One night Barry returned from South Armagh very late to find Barbara still awake; lying naked on their bed in a provocative pose. She had worked hard to regain her figure since the baby was born and was proud of it. She wanted him to notice; wanted to see her success in his eyes.

“I've been waiting for you,” she said throatily.

Her blatant sexuality startled Barry. Since Brian's birth he had carried a mental image, unlikely though he knew that image to be, of Barbara as madonna.

“Would you like to photograph me?” she invited.

He swallowed hard. “I must have a hundred pictures of you already.”

“From our honeymoon! Take some of me now. Like this.”

“I don't need to. I have only to close my eyes to see you in living colour in any pose I like.”

She leaped from the bed, ran to her dressing room, and slammed the door. “I hate you, Barry Halloran, I
hate
you! You don't care about anything but your stupid war!”

 

On the eleventh of March Keith and Kenneth Littlejohn, who had been convicted of membership in the IRA, escaped from prison. The subject was a matter of intense discussion among republicans. “Rumour has it,” McCoy told the Usual Suspects in the Bleeding Horse, “that they both work for MI6.” He added darkly, “Infiltrators. Informers.”

In the United Kingdom the newly elected Labour prime minister, Harold Wilson, was beginning to exercise his power. April saw free family planning made available on the British National Health Service. Women in the Republic looked enviously across the border.

 

Barbara Halloran was not among them. She thought giving birth was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to her. Her son was complete and perfect in every detail, like a great opera of which she was both creator and producer. Barry might be preoccupied but she always had Brian.

For a time she became oversolicitous. She insisted Brian's cot be placed next to their bed so she could check on him again and again in the night. Long before he could walk she bought an elaborate safety gate for the stairs.