She was to remain unaware of her full role in the death of Harry and Billy Downs. She never discovered that it was her chatter over the back fence about the strange accent of the man who lived under her roof that was to start the process that led, near-directly, to the gunfire in the street (interrupting her late Monday morning breakfast). She told those who came to listen to her that the thing she found the strangest was the confidence and authority with which Harry was holding the gun as he shot down Duffryn against the lamp-post (a few feet from where she stood at the door). The cold methodical power with which that quiet man, a man she had grown to like but knew little about, executed the youngster, had shaken her more than any of the other horrors of five years of living on the Falls.
The army had come mid-morning and backed a Saracen right up to the gate. Two men in civilian clothes had waited till the doors were opened and screened them from casual view from the pavements, then hurried into the house. They had searched Harry’s room slowly and carefully while soldiers hovered round the house and the street was sealed to all cars. When the men left it was with all Harry’s possessions slung together into big transparent plastic bags.
Later that same day Josephine arrived to help with the teas. It was a wasted visit, as the guests had cried off. There were no takers for the lodging used by British intelligence. Some telephoned their apologies and listed excuses, others simply failed to turn up. Instead Josephine was told the events of the day. She listened without comment, and sat on a straight chair in the kitchen, sipping her tea, and smoking a cigarette. She was another who would never learn her full part in the affair. She went home that night believing her information alone had led the Provisionals to Harry. In the months ahead she was to stay distant from any connection with politics and with violence. Left alone by the IRA, she took to remaining at home in the evenings with her mother, shutting out the memories of the few hours she had spent with Harry, of how he had betrayed her, and of how she had betrayed him.
Billy Downs’s funeral was a bigger day than any in his young life. A huge and winding crocodile of relatives and friends marched behind his tricolour-draped coffin up the Falls Road. It had been the army’s intention to prevent the firing of the traditional volley over the body, but the procession diverted into the back streets of the Lower Falls and before it emerged again the shots had been fired. Photographers were icily warned of the consequences of taking pictures.
Eight men from Ypres Avenue took the weight of the coffin on their shoulders for the first part of the journey to Milltown Cemetery. Grim, set faces, they marched at the head of a crowd estimated by police at around three thousand. Behind them came the display of force, youths and girls in semi-uniform, the green motif dominating, polished Sam Brownes, shouted commands and the tramping of feet.
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 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 passed 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 the 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 classification that took into account what she was accused of, not her potential as an escape risk. They flew her, with a prison escort, by Wessex helicopter from Belfast to the parade square of Gough barracks in the old cathedral town. When she stepped out onto 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 shivering. 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 compassionate 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 MC 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.’
‘Undercover 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 farewell. There was a wreath from the Prime Minister, and Davidson took time from his packing to attend. Frost was there too. Both stayed back from the graveside, and neither introduced themselves to the 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.