I quickly became fascinated by the video, playing it over and over again. It was the sound that got me - noisy, bland, impenetrable as it was. If not for an imminent deadline I might have spent hours trying to crack that enigmatic soundtrack, like a character in Brian de Palma’s Blow Out or Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation. As it was I played the clip at different volumes, through different speakers, but the brief dialogue between Prince Charles and Gerry Adams never got any clearer. The most you can catch is the deep intonation of Adams’s voice, but the words are lost.
What would you say to a man who defended the murder of a beloved family member and who many republicans claim was on the IRA army council when it blew up Lord Louis Mountbatten’s boat in 1979? And what would you say to the prince who, as heir to the British throne, stands for everything Irish republicans fought against?
In the video they almost seem to drift into one another by accident, but obviously everything has been carefully planned, including the distance and angle of the camera, watching from a distance but giving them space – and privacy. Perhaps the only unplanned thing is the cup of tea resting on a saucer in Prince Charles’s hand.
The prince looks nervous and apprehensive. Adams looks keyed up. While Charles is fortified for an uncomfortable encounter, Adams is poised for it. He leans in and speaks his words immediately. A bland greeting? It does not look like one. It looks as if he is saying something emotional and deliberate. Charles in reply seems to say something that might be “terrible”.
Meanwhile they shake hands. And shake hands. And shake hands. As if their hands were bonded together by Superglue, the prince and the man who denies he was ever a terrorist simply cannot prise their hands apart. Their handshake goes on sawing up and down, an out of control physical gesture which neither knows how to stop. It might be the nervous, compensatory, baffled mechanical impulse of two people who really, really feel the awkwardness of their official encounter. And yet it also might be something more human – the desperate attempt to put all that cannot be said into a joining of hands that is a basic symbol of respect. After all the violence, how can this handshake ever be enough? Perhaps only if it goes on forever.
Is it, as it appears, a weighty exchange? The prince looks mildly caught off his guard, surprised by what Adams said. Their gliding encounter, all 13 seconds of it, ends with a formal introduction by Adams to the next guest to glad-hand. Suddenly, normal life resumes: another royal handshake, another official greeting.
But for a moment, as these two men meet, history hangs there like smoke. There is a terrible portentousness to it. We don’t often see such moments of symbolism in public life. The stakes are so low. When David Cameron stood by his defeated rivals at the VE Day commemoration, it was in the end just a meeting of a winner and two losers in an election that was peaceful and correct. But here is a reminder of how much bigger and darker politics can be. Gerry Adams and Prince Charles are representatives of two sides that so recently fought a war on Irish and British soil. Death and bitterness are the shadows behind their civilised, suited encounter.
And yet it happened. A handshake, a few studied words, and all the appearance of a genuine emotional communication between these two unlike people.
The peace process goes on, with this strange, impossible meeting another milestone on a road to peace that we are in danger of taking for granted. Once the images were of soldiers in armoured cars and bomb-shattered pubs. Now we watch two men, both getting older, shaking hands, their words a murmured secret reconciliation. In all the bloody scenes of this unforgiving world, this was a teatime miracle.