Five days after their mother had been laid to rest, the children left a wreath of roses and carnations by her grave. Their message was simple, and written in childish scrawl: To Mummy - all our love.' Next to it lay a wreath from their father, Brian Godfrey. 'Wish you were here, Sue - all my love,' it read.
Mayor Tarry, as busy as ever, was suffering too: 'The awful-ness of the tragedy was driven home to me at the funerals. I went to seven or eight of them within two days. They are bad enough at the best of times. But it was the repeating and the repeating of the funerals. Sandra Hill used to live just around the corner from me, and I knew her father quite well. I went to her cremation at Oxford. She had just come back to Hungerford to see some friends. She was young. The chapel was full of young people. That was the last funeral I went to. I couldn't speak to the parents afterwards. I was just exhausted. She had just chanced to be in Hungerford that day. I was very upset indeed then. I thought, I can't take much more of this. That really was a low point for me. But there was so much else to do, I simply had to get on.'
The first of the funerals had taken place two days earlier, on Wednesday 26 August, exactly one week after the massacre. It was the funeral of Eric Vardy. At the graveside, his widow, Marlyne, wept uncontrollably. Clutching a spray of red roses, she heard the Reverend Nigel Sands speak eloquently about a shocked and stunned rural community. Addressing the mourners in the twelfth-century parish church of St Mary's in Great Shefford, West Berkshire, he said: 'We have from afar become blasé about news of violence and sudden death in Ireland and the Middle East. But when it came to our doorsteps or, for one family, into our living-room, we learned in the most awful manner that murder and mayhem are not confined to Beirut and Belfast.'
In fact another irony haunted the death of Eric Vardy. For one year earlier, Marlyne and Eric Vardy had together made arrangements for her funeral rather than his. This was because medical experts had deemed it extremely unlikely that Marlyne, although only in her forties, would survive major cancer surgery. But she had defied their judgement, and thus it fell to her, not Eric, to write the wording of a wreath. She chose a heart of red roses on a bed of white carnations, the flowers bearing her final message of farewell:
Time cannot dim the face I love,
The memory of your smile,
The countless things you did for me
To make my life worthwhile.
You've left a place no one can fill.
In my heart you'll live forever.
Love, Marlyne
Day after day, it seemed, in every corner of Berkshire, funerals were taking place. More than 200 people attended the funeral of Mr Abdul Rahman Khan, as Muslim mourners paid their last respects. Chief Constable Colin Smith led a contingent of Thames Valley police officers at the cremation of Douglas Wainwright, shot down in his car. His widow, Kathleen, herself injured in the shooting, attended the service wearing a sling. And as that cremation was taking place, more than 300 people crowded into St Lawrence's, to hear the Reverend Salt conduct the double funeral of Myrtle and Jack Gibbs, in the presence of their four sons and three daughters. As he did so, less than half a mile away a private family service was being held for Francis Butler, the twenty-six-year-old accounts clerk gunned down while walking his dog.
The funeral service of Dorothy Ryan, the gunman's mother, was one of the few to face rows of empty pews. Some forty mourners attended the service, which was conducted by Canon John Reynolds. He chose to avoid any mention of her son and made only the most fleeting of references to the massacre he had perpetrated at Hungerford. Although the Canon described Mrs Ryan as a kind, warm and generous person, he made no mention of her role as a devoted mother to the man who, ten days earlier, had shot her dead as she begged for her life to be spared. The funeral was held at St Mary's Church in Calne, Wiltshire, Dorothy Ryan's birthplace and the home of her sister, Mrs Nora Fairbrass. A senior officer from the Thames Valley Police attended the funeral, as did a representative of Hungerford Town Council. Nobody doubted that Dorothy Ryan was herself a victim, and indeed her grave was heaped with flowers, including an anonymous circle of white chrysanthemums with the message: 'With Christian Love - From One Mother to Another.'
Another mother in some difficulty during that week of funerals was Jenny Barnard. The cremation of her husband, Barney, took place on the same day as Roger Brereton's, and it was the first of the funerals to be held in the massacre town itself. More than 300 people attended the service conducted by the Reverend Wallace Edwards in the town's Methodist chapel. As Jenny Barnard held their silently sleeping five-week-old son Joe tightly to her chest, 'Bridge over Troubled Waters', Barney's favourite tune, was played as the cabby's coffin was carried in.
'He was a bridge over troubled waters to many people,' said the Methodist minister. 'One of the characters who made Hunger-ford tick. Barney had such plans for Joe. He is the son Barney adored. We are grateful that he had him, if only for five weeks. This little boy represents an opportunity to us all. We cannot undo what happened last week, but we can help Jenny, Joe's mother, to bring him up as Barney would have wanted her to do.'
As Wallace Edwards read from the Book of Lamentations and the Gospel of St John, Jenny Barnard, dressed in black, sobbed and shook uncontrollably. 'Barney brought sunshine into old people's lives,' the minister said. 'Sometimes he didn't even collect his fares. He cared for people and carried them. God worked through Barney and this was his way of answering our prayers. Of course the effect of this tragedy will stay with us for a long time. We are a tight-knit community. But I do see a little light at the end of the tunnel. He is a little light shining in our darkness. And his name is Joe.'
Not so very far away, at Newbury Baptist church, the Reverend Granville Overton was officiating at the burial service of Ian Play le, the Justices' clerk. He had died in hospital some forty-eight hours after being shot by Ryan. His widow immediately agreed that his heart and kidneys could be used for transplantation. By doing this and helping others, the minister said, Ian Playle's love of life was being perpetuated. And so, all around Hungerford, the funerals were to continue. One after another, throughout that week, until Roland and Sheila Mason, Ken Clements and George White - and eventually all sixteen of Ryan's victims - had likewise been laid to rest. 'Social services asked me if I was all right,' recalls Ron Tarry. 'They asked how I was coping. My wife told them that this is how he spends his life - rushing around - so let him rush around now - it's what he knows best. But the next week I spent just exhausted and flat. But all the time the functions were going on. As Mayor I had to go along to receive the money, so that sort of carried me through. Groups of children would have large sales, often selling off their own toys. One sale raised It 12. That touched me as much as the larger donations. Others had had a sponsored silence. And I remember thinking at the time how delighted the parents must have been to see their children raise money in that way.'
David Lee, the headmaster of the John O'Gaunt School, was in something of a quandary. Ryan had taken refuge in the school after the shootings. There, he had made his way into Room 6, used mainly for English lessons, where he had himself been taught. Having barricaded the door with a filing cabinet, table and chairs, he had conducted a tense conversation with Sergeant Brightwell from that room. And it was there, too, that he had taken his own life. Days later Ryan's blood was still on the walls; the windows remained smashed. But exercizing the mind of the headmaster was the fact that exactly twenty days after the massacre, some 700 children were due to begin the new school year.
David Lee wondered what his approach should be. 'I dread to think what would have happened if all of this had taken place when the school had been occupied,' he admitted. 'The town has had a traumatic experience, and so have the children. But it's not for me to protect them from reality. I think to pretend that nothing had happened would be ridiculous.'
By the time the pupils returned on Tuesday 8 September they found the room in which Ryan had taken refuge looking spick and span. It h
ad been completely redecorated and refurbished, and all traces of the recent events eliminated. Nonetheless, a team of counsellors and psychiatrists stood by, ready to help any child who might be having difficulty coping with the chilling thought of being taught in a room where a former pupil had taken his own life immediately after slaughtering sixteen people. But the team of experts found themselves without work that day. David Lee had every reason to feel proud of his pupils, and he did.
Two weeks and two days after the start of the school term, the spotlight was once again on Hungerford, for the inquest was about to begin. The coroner for West Berkshire, Charles Hoile, instructed the jury that it was up to them to examine the fury and ferocity of Ryan's attack. Jurors were handed booklets containing photographs of the bodies and the area where the victims had met their deaths. Piled under a pink blanket were Ryan's two semi-automatic rifles and the Beretta pistol with which he had taken his own life. His bloodstained body armour and battledress jacket were also waiting to be displayed. Evidence was taken from Thomas Warlow, a firearms expert. Then Dr Richard Shepherd, a forensic pathologist, gave graphic and detailed accounts of the wounds and probable causes of death of each of the victims.
Altogether, seventy-three statements were selected for use in court. Some were to be delivered in person by the witness, in which case further questioning could take place, while others, like Hannah Godfrey's, were simply read. Throughout the four-day hearing, nuns from a Franciscan community in the area took responsibility for welcoming and caring for people who came or who were brought to them in the hall. The Hungerford Family Help Unit was again in action, working closely with the Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths in the task of collecting death certificates after the hearing. Unit staff were also involved throughout the hearings providing support for witnesses and relatives alike. The inquest was undoubtedly another milestone in the events set in train by that fateful Wednesday afternoon. So much had happened in Hungerford, and yet the massacre had taken place just one month earlier.
Liz Brereton was continuing to receive a great deal of support from both family and friends. But she kept insisting that she simply did not need any of the professional help which was constantly being offered to her. 'That's the trouble with me,' she would later admit, 'I'm terribly stubborn. I did have some support, but not full-scale counselling. It was only when my dog had to be put down, a little later on, that it all came out. Ben was my husband Roger's dog, a border collie, but he was my shadow. When I heard the news, I just dropped the phone, and that was it, it all came out that day. Then I just couldn't stop. This trigger of the dog was like coming out of a cage for me, because it was only then that I really began to realize precisely what I had lost. Not just my partner and friend, but a future too. Then, the tears really did come in earnest, and they still do. And I suppose that has to be a good thing.'
Because the shooting of Sue Godfrey had taken place in Wiltshire rather than Berkshire, a separate inquest had to be held. Once again the experts were out, relaying the minutiae of her death as part of the official procedures which had to be followed. During the first few weeks after the murder of their mother both Hannah and James repeatedly wet their beds. Neither of them could sleep and kept making their way to their father's bedroom. From the outset, though, Brian Godfrey's courage had shone through. 'No matter how bleak things look now,' he insisted at the time, 'I am determined to hold things together for the sake of the children. But God knows what they must be going through.'
With all the innocence of their age, Hannah and James would speak of the nasty man who took mummy away and shot her. With the blunt honesty of small children, they would talk openly about the killing. It was only when they would fall or hurt themselves that they would cry out for the mother they had lost. Brian Godfrey reveals: 'They talk about it quite frequently. They are very frank about it. In fact it's sometimes difficult to cope with the way they are talking about it. It takes people by surprise. Shortly before the inquest James fell over and hurt himself. He was crying out, asking for mummy. We had a big crying session and I told them that mummy would not be coming back. Hannah has been particularly protective towards her brother. As for me, I seemed to have a constant headache for weeks on end, though. I just felt sick. In those early days I would go into each of the children's rooms, before they went to sleep each night and say: "Right, any worries, questions, problems?" I remember that James was very sweet one night. I walked in and before I could speak he said: "I not got no problems daddy." I thought, well, at least one of us is doing all right.'
On Thursday 8 October 1987 a memorial and rededication service was held for the town of Hungerford. It was, according to Mayor Tarry, the day on which life in the town could begin again. Three thousand grieving townsfolk, some sixty per cent of the population of Hungerford, huddled against the cold by the steps of the town hall in a moving open-air service, shared with millions of television viewers. Once again, the flag on the town hall fluttered at half-mast. The Reverend Salt, who was responsible for much of the organization, bid everyone welcome that evening, and said: 'Together we now place ourselves before Almighty God, our Heavenly Father. May we, who have been preserved, dedicate ourselves anew to His service. May we offer ourselves to each other in the life of our community, with respect for every human soul, and with thankfulness for all God's gifts to us. To Almighty God, our Creator, and the defender of every soul, living and departed, be all praise and glory, now and for ever. Amen.'
It was the closest anybody was to get, that evening, to mentioning the name of Michael Ryan. As the list of the deceased was read out by Mayor Tarry, the gunman's name, a hard one to utter in that grieving town, was deliberately omitted.
The VIPs were out in force. The Queen and Prince Philip were represented by the Lord Lieutenant of Berkshire, Colonel the Hon. Gordon Palmer. The junior Home Office minister, Douglas Hogg, stood in for the Prime Minister. The Prince and Princess of Wales were represented by Prince Harry's godfather, the Hon. Gerald Ward, a wealthy West Berkshire landowner and one of the three trustees of the Tragedy Fund.
The principal sermon was preached by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the most Reverend and Right Honourable Robert Runcie. He was convinced that Hungerford was already on the road to recovery, as he said: 'The sharing of hurt is often the beginning of its healing. And all that I have heard about the people of this town and your reaction to this tragedy convinces me that the healing process has already begun. Those of you here that day shared in common fear and bewilderment. It was then that you became companions in adversity. And such companionship in adversity has its own good and healing power. It breeds not bitterness but warmth. You have already begun to build your life on the stories you have to tell. I think of Susan Godfrey, the first victim, whose calm and measured response saved the lives of her children. They will grow knowing her story and so learning how closely love and sacrifice are linked. I think too of Police Constable Roger Brereton, whose courage cost him his life, who knew that the community looked to him for its own safety.'
Just before the Archbishop's address, there was a commemoration of the departed. It came in the form of a poem written by the Reverend Geoffrey Carr, formerly Rural Dean of Bradfield:
Deep Sympathy to Hungerford, August 1987
History has been kind the centuries down
To our beloved, ancient, quiet town;
Many have lived and died in peace while bearing
Our mede of human ills and pain and sharing,
Until the holocaust of a bright summer's day
Swept, in the crash of shots, our peace away.
Before, no thought could ever have conceived
Such bloody ending to the way we lived;
Before we took for granted we lived far
From crimes of madness, so much worse than war.
We still cannot believe a God-hating devil
Could turn a neighbour's mind to speechless evil.
But 2,000 years ago, to kill a child
> A king by fear and jealousy made wild,
Deliberately, knocking door to door
Sent soldiers; no regard for rich or poor,
To snatch each baby boy, two years and under,
From family and life to rend asunder.
No words can fully tell our grief- or theirs,
But weeping we can turn to One Who cares.
Mary was saved from Bethlehem mother's loss
Only to watch her Son upon the Cìvss.. .
He broke the awful power of crime and death;
Tortured, yet praying with each pain-filled breath
Father, forgive, they know not what they do'
He lives to heal and love and comfort you.
He promises the world the Day will come
When tears, pain, death will no more rend a home.
Men will learn war no more, a child shall lead
Hungerford: One Man's Massacre Page 16
