The guns fell silent on St Stephen's Green, that Easter morning. Both sides inhaled again.
James Kearney emerged from his little house on the corner, with a brown bag raised above his head. To deafening silence, he ambled to the pond where the ducks were at rest, and fed them. They were, in his words, “very little perturbed by the bullets flying over their heads."
Kearney was to receive a parchment certificate for his work, from the Dublin Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
A peculiarity of war. Amid the chaos, the agreement that the ducks needed food.
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Jack Charlton emerged from the Áras, humbled, clutching his new passport.
"This is one of the best days of my life, maybe, even the best," he said. "I am conscious of the honour which has been conferred on Pat and myself and we both feel privileged and proud."
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The island of Ireland in December '85 was no fit State. Enticing Eoin Hand's successor as Ireland manager would require a silver tongue and a golden hello.
Belfast's Unionists reeled from Margaret Thatcher and Garret FitzGerald's Anglo-Irish Agreement, which was as close to 'selling out' as Unionism had come since Home Rule. But just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they are not out to get you.
Dublin's influence on the agreement was clear, and that was enough to strain loyalties that stretched to the Crown, but not to fly-by-night British governments. The word 'conspiracy' was enshrined in the Ulster Covenant, after all. A feeling of embattlement and siege was there at the best of times; the last thing they needed was a good reason.
So, the booming began.
But as Ulster said no to the beat of one Paisley, Dublin was looking for a 'yes' from another.
Bob Paisley was the man whom the FAI's Des Casey had earmarked to elevate the Republic of Ireland. Paisley had grown great affection for the country, as Ireland's near-umbilical link with the city of Liverpool claimed another starry-eyed victim. He was now aware that his role as an advisor to Kenny Dalglish was little more than a sop, having delivered a host of silverware to Liverpool FC.
In Dublin, crowds had dwindled with the team's performances, with just 8,000 at Lansdowne Road to watch Ireland succumb 4-1 to Denmark in Hand's final match. The man who took over would start from the lowest of low expectations.
Paisley had been approached for the role the year before, but leaked media stories torpedoed any possible deal. This time around, Paisley was seen as the 'fourth man' on an ostensible list of three, alongside John Giles, Liam Tuohy and Jack Charlton.
Voting machinations, supposedly stemming from other board members feeling press-ganged by Casey, meant that Paisley was overlooked in favour of Jack Charlton.
"He got the job by accident," his biographer Colin Young told Off The Ball.
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Ireland's newest Englishman was disarmingly uninterested in the border issues. In fact, it appeared that anything interfering with fishing and shooting - even football - was vaguely irksome.
"He mentioned the Troubles once, in a taxi from Dublin Airport into the city," said Young. "They passed some graffiti on a wall, and he asked 'what does that mean?'
"He was given a robust, 30-minute explanation by a Dublin taxi driver, and I think he decided that it was the last time he was going to ask that question. He didn't understand the answer and he didn't care. A lot of his attitude towards it, and his ability to rise above it, came from that moment."
It was a charming ignorance that Brian Kerr also recalled, from time coaching the Irish youth team. They were sharing a training pitch with Sheffield Wednesday, then under Charlton.
"At the end of one of the training sessions, we were wrapping up the bibs and the balls. Our gear might have been quite an indication that we were the Irish football team - it had 'IRELAND' written on the back of it and it was all green.
"I remember Liam [Tuohy] rambling over towards Jack to thank him for the use of the training ground. Jack confused us with Northern Ireland and said to Liam: "How's Billy [Bingham] doing?"
Tuohy took it with good grace, such were the manners of both men. But it came to be the way that Jack was with the national side, too.
He was apart from, but not above, the conflicts between the island and England. He was the acceptable face of Englishness.
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As it went, Jack's Geordie roots exemplified to the Irish nation that not all areas of England were Tory heartlands. His own town - Ashington - was once the biggest mining community in the world. The Charltons senior, Bob and Cissie, were staunchly socialist.
Colin Young remembers a story about the family from the 1966 World Cup that showed their sensibilities. Jack's father, Bob, was unable to make many of the matches. Taking time off from the mines was not the done thing, no matter who your sons were. His mother, Cissie, would travel alone, usually on the day of the game.
“She was hunting around London for a hotel, without success. She enlisted Jack’s help, who recommended this hotel in the centre,” said Young.
“She went there, asked for a room, and was told that there were none left. Frustrated, she started to walk away, when someone in the lobby recognised her. She started calling Cissie ‘Mrs Charlton’ and then asks about Jack and Bobby, and the games.
“The receptionist said: ‘I didn’t realise it was you, Mrs Charlton - which room would you like? Would you like one with a bathroom suite?’
“Cissie said: ‘If you haven’t got a room when I’m not Cissie Charlton, but now you do because I am, I’m not interested,’ before walking out.”
Such working-class fire would not be dimmed and, given the dystopian realities of 1984, would be needed more than ever. Margaret Thatcher announced the closure of 20 coal mines that year. By 1988, Ashington Colliery would be shut after 121 years of coal production, and with it went the jobs of the majority of the village.
The strikes that followed would split the UK down the middle. Arthur Scargill, National Union of Mineworkers' chief and Thatcher's bête noire, would go on to become a close friend of Jack's and praise his 'unwavering' support of the miners.
This was the Englishman that Ireland adopted.
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3,532.
That number consists of 1,841 + 1,114 + 11 + 396 + 170. In turn; civilians, British security forces, Irish state personnel, Republicans and Loyalists. Each one tore apart a family, each still echoes.
It is easy to become snowblind to the realities of those statistics, to the chaos and destruction of The Troubles.
But, in a crowded field, October 1993 made its case for being the darkest month before the dawn.
On October 7th, John Hume met Taoiseach Albert Reynolds to update him on pan-nationalist talks with Sinn Féin. But, as with the peace process, the rug was not long in place before being pulled out again.
At Frizzell's Fish Shop on the Shankill Road, two weeks later, the building collapsed with the power of the bomb. Nine people, and bomber Thomas Begley, were killed. A seven-year-old girl, Michelle Baird, was among the dead. A community, revolted and enraged, demanded revenge.
Former Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) prisoner Billy McQuistan told the BBC: "On that particular day, if the UFF had walked into a picture house on the Falls Road and killed 300 people, I would have been quite happy."
Revenge came on the eve of Halloween. The UFF burst into a pub in Greysteel, Co. Derry, shouting 'trick or treat' before murdering seven innocent people.
As the people of the north gazed long into the abyss, they must have wondered if it stared back.
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Jack Charlton and his team travelled to Belfast for a World Cup qualifier, when it would be unthinkable in other circumstances.
Three weeks had passed since Greysteel, and the coach wound its way towards Windsor Park. Where normally there would be songs and craic, there was darkness and silence.
The nearer the stadium, groups of kids would gather, making guns with their hands and shouting 'Fenian bastards!'
Jack would recall in an interview with Bill O'Herlihy of the night, with genuine puzzlement: "I didn’t think that it was going to be exactly like it was. It bordered on the nasty at times. I didn’t like that."
The Republic's goalscorer that night, Alan McLoughlin, remembered how Jack's knack of mixing up names broke the tension.
"During the team talk, I struggled to suppress my laughter as Jack told our team to watch out for Northern Ireland’s centre-half ‘Alan McLoughlin’ when they got a corner.
"I could see Jack getting more and more annoyed with the smirk plastered across my face. ‘And what the bloody hell is so funny?’ he eventually asked. That was pure Jack."
He had an unwitting knack of making theatre of the absurd.
“The one thing that came out was Jack’s sense of humour got them through it. He asked one of the Northern Ireland fans for a fag while the game was going on," said Colin Young.
“It was ridiculous behaviour, but he relieved so much of the tension just by the way he was.
“As much as they gave the impression that they didn’t like each other and would do whatever they could to wind each other up, Billy Bingham and Jack got on really well. So much so that Jack was there for the presentation to Billy in the supporters’ club."
After telling him 'up yours as well, Billy," Jack apologised and was invited to the presentation that the Northern Ireland FA made to Bingham after his last game in charge.
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Charlton was dragged in front of the cameras, after dragging fans from the pitch.
"It is a disaster. I hate this. We have never had anything like this in this country, and we have never created anything like this abroad.
"When I played for England, I never experienced anything like this before. I've seen a lot in football but I've never seen anything like that."
The rioting at Lansdowne cast Jack, whether he or we knew it, as a different kind of character.
"We play the North here, but I guarantee that they'll behave themselves. And we'll behave ourselves and there'll be none of that with us. There never has been. Every Englishman should be ashamed of what went on there tonight."
Either unknowingly or without fanfare, Charlton showed a genteel, decent strand of Englishness that stands alongside 'us'. Decent people. Both sides.
The only stereotypical Englishness that Jack showed was occasional sunburn. He was far from the fluttering Union Jacks, jingoism, and aggression of that night in 1995.
While it was undoubtedly the scenes of violence that stoked his anger, there was another element when he faced England. Jack maintained until the end that he sent a letter to the FA asking to be considered for the England job, after Don Revie's departure. He did not receive even an acknowledgement.
“From a football perspective, there was an element of wanting to stick one up to the blazers of the English FA, in the games where he played England," said his biographer Colin Young.
"All the things that ticked the box for the Irish supporters certainly wouldn't have been the case with the FA. He would have revenge in mind, because he would have seen it purely from a football perspective.”
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"The whole place was one big party," Jack said of the night of July 30th, 1966, recalled in 'Jack and Bobby'.
"I got so drunk I don't remember much about it after that except that Jimmy and I woke up in some house in Leytonstone, on the floor and settee.
"The house belonged to a lad called Lenny and his wife. The next morning I went down to the garden and a woman popped her head over the wall and said 'Hello, Jackie'.
"I could not believe it. It was one of our neighbours from Ashington - Mrs Mather.
"She was visiting relatives who lived next door. 'How are you going Jackie?' she asked a little suspiciously.
"I think she was wondering what I was doing in a house in Leytonstone."
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"We're there. We're in the last eight for the first time in our history, and it's magic. I'm delighted for the lads.
"Good luck to the people back home. I hope they have a good party."
Boy, did they.
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Whether Jack Charlton's life made a difference or not to Anglo-Irish relations, it doesn't really matter. He didn't set out to do anything other than win football matches. But football is the most important of the least important things, and these victories gave light relief to an island that sorely needed it.
Jack had the aspects that English people like to see in themselves, - the loyal, family man; the hard worker that cared. He also had those English eccentricities, like not being able to walk past a shoe shop without buying a pair of sensible black shoes, or unable to walk past a baby without throwing it in the air, with a big grin.
He was without the aspects that Irish people occasionally enjoy seeing in English people. Jack wasn't belligerent, jingoistic, or exclusive. His was a big tent. It must have been, to be recognised by the leader of Sinn Féin as "Ireland’s most beloved English man.”
He had a vulnerability to him, with his heart on his sleeve whether celebrating the win in Stuttgart or trying to chin Tony Cascarino for teasing about baldness. It was why he was so hurt by the cries of 'Judas' when he visited Wembley; why it was so heartbreaking to hear him say, "But I won a World Cup for these people."
"I've always liked to be well-liked," Jack said to Bill O'Herlihy. He was as loved as much as you could love someone you didn't know.
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"I was fishing above the bridge, in Galway. I was looking forward to getting under the bridge, where I knew the fish were lying.
"I put my backside against this stone, facing where I wanted to fish. All of a sudden, there was a guy coming down the bank.
"He says 'Jack, you've got to come out of the water.' I said 'Nah, nah, nah, this is the spot I've been waiting for.' He says 'Come on, you've got to get out of the water.'
"He waded in - he didn't have anything on except his clothes! - and he said, 'You've got to come out of the water, the Gardaí are up there! You've stopped the traffic all the way through Galway!"
The water was his happy place.
Jack was the one we trusted to feed the ducks.
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