Happy Like Murderers

by Gordon Burn

  At least two or three times a week during this period Rose would go out to the local pubs and clubs in and around Gloucester. Rose and Fred never ever went out much together because they would always end up arguing. So she would go and if she met somebody she would either bring them back to the house or more likely go to where they lived. She’d always have to let Fred know once the pubs had closed what she was going to do. That was a steadfast rule. If she was coming home or staying out until the morning. She wasn’t always willing to go. She was often reluctant. She was tired. It was tiring looking after a house and four children. By the time she had washed, fed, changed them, got out and shopped, she was drained. As soon as she sat down to have a cup of tea or something she found herself falling asleep. Fred would cuss her if he caught her. Kick her; drown her in hot water or tea. Either it was the children if she was in, or she was out with these other men. It was tiring. He used to send her out night after night. He used to grind her down, telling her she was a bad wife if she didn’t do things for her husband. In those days, whenever Rose went out she always looked presentable. She would dress nicely, put on a little make-up and some of the junk jewellery that Fred was always picking up and that he liked to see her wear. She usually went out without any underwear and would quite brazenly sit with her legs open. She hated Anna-Marie wearing trousers and would tell her that she should be letting the air get to her.

  Starting in about 1976 when Anna-Marie was twelve, Rose would sometimes dress her up and put make-up on her and take her out with her for the evening. She would apply some blusher and a slash of lipstick and put her in a dress that made her look older than her years. Not tarty, Anna thought at the time, just older. Grown up and quite pretty. This happened one summer night when she was twelve or thirteen and she would remember they were laughing and joking. Anna laughing and Rose laughing and Fred chuckling watching them. She didn’t feel apprehensive. The three of them got in the green Bedford van that Fred was driving at the time and he drove them to a pub in the country outside Gloucester and left them.

  Anna drank Gold Label barley wine which was very potent. Rose was buying. She was laughing and joking and talking to a few people. She bought some crisps. It was very relaxed. Anna remembers drinking Gold Label. Rose would say it was Malibu and Coke. But the same result. Anna got drunk. She got steamed. Even at twelve she was a good drinker. She was going to pubs with squaddies. She was running around the streets acting like a tramp with army blokes and Rose found it so disheartening to see a young girl wasting her time. She could hold her drink. But she was very drunk and unsteady walking when they set off in the direction of Gloucester on foot. This was strange. But Anna was drunk from drinking Gold Label barley wine which was very potent and so didn’t ask why they were walking home. They had walked a short distance from the pub down a country lane into the dark when Anna saw her father’s Bedford van cruise to a stop in front of them and noticed Rose’s mood change in a very drastic manner. The back doors of the van opened and she was pushed in the back. Rose punched her in the back. ‘If you think you’re going to be fucking friends with me, you’ve got another think coming. You’re fucking joking.’ Anna had a light blue skirt on and a blouse. Clothes that Rose had chosen for her just a couple of hours earlier and made her feel like she was being taken out on the town by an older sister. They had been kidding and joking. She was bundled into the back of the van and her father came into the back and he was hitting her. Rose was scratching at her breasts causing them to bleed and her father was hitting her. It was the van where she would often have sex with her father and that was the secret between them. There was a mattress in the van and the tools were all tidy in the van and never seemed to get in the way. A purple light would go on on the dashboard and it would start. Tongue in the mouth kisses. She hated it. Rose was hitting her and twisting her nipples and her father was hitting her. She couldn’t believe what was happening. The viciousness and the names. She had done nothing to hurt either of them. She was only a child. Rose was being sarcastic and calling her names and taunting and laughing and fondling her breasts and squeezing and pinching. She was held down by Rose while her father raped her.

  When it was over they just drove home to Cromwell Street where the other children had been left without anybody looking after them. Anna made her way to the bathroom, washed her injuries and crawled into bed.

  Her feelings were very deep within herself, she would say. She couldn’t relay her true feelings to paper. Her report would show that she had been absent from school on fifty-two occasions that year.

  *

  The summer of 1976 was a summer when a few drops of rain made headlines. The crowd applauded when rain stopped play during the cricket at the Oval. It was a scorchingly hot summer and once again Bill Letts took Rose and the children on holiday to the holiday camp in Westward Ho! in Devon. But the holiday was cut short when Rose scandalized her father by working her way through the resident band. It was the joke of the camp and Bill Letts refused to stay and be laughed at, or let her be laughed at, any more. She didn’t care, but they packed their bags and drove home.

  From somebody who wouldn’t have the dirty gypsy Fred West in his house, Bill Letts had been converted into somebody who was to be found at Fred West’s house more and more. He took voluntary redundancy from Smith’s Industries in 1976. He was fifty-five. And when they got back from Devon, Fred and Rose’s father applied to join the National Federation of Master Window Cleaners together.

  At the end of 1975 Fred had got rid of the lodgers. One of them had complained to the council about overcrowding. The house was not registered as what was called a house in multiple occupation and he had been given thirteen weeks to install a fire escape and an alarm system. But rather than do that Fred decided to get rid of the lodgers until the heat had gone off, when he would have the lodgers back in again.

  There had been some talk at the beginning of 1976 about turning the cellar into a granny flat for Grampy Letts. A place for Grampy Letts and his new lump-sum redundancy payment to live in. You can believe that the whiff of money would have played some large part in the thinking of the compulsive pilferer and handler of stolen goods who was offering. The man Stephen called the incredible thieving machine. Daisy Letts warned her husband of this before he too left her to go with Fred West. ‘I warned him that there was always going to be somebody waiting to pick him up with his money.’ But who was going to be doing what to who? That’s what it came down to in the end. Bill Letts was no helpless bystander in these matters. It had been a trait of his that he would always use whatever means possible to get what he wanted. Whatever he had, he had to have the best. And if he had to con his children out of their savings to have it, that’s what he would do. He was ruthless. ‘You pay your way first, and what’s left you live on.’ That had always been Mrs Letts’s motto. But not her husband’s. She always felt she upheld Dad in a lot of ways. He would always put the money on her, for her to sort out. Bills. He was a spendthrift. He borrowed two hundred pounds off Andrew once when Andrew had just started working and was still living at home, he said to buy a fireplace. Andrew never saw it again. You knew you were never going to see it again. His own father was a regular target. He was always tapping his father for money. Old Bill Letts senior never had any peace with their dad trying to wangle his money out of him.

  Andrew, who was trusting and naïve, had grown up thinking of his grandfather just as somebody who used to work for the gentry, the well-to-do kind of people. He’d sort of run the house for these kind of people. A bit of a ladies’ man. Used to like the ladies. Always used to put on an impression for the ladies by all accounts when he was younger. After the death of their Grandma Letts, who everybody had known in the Bideford area of north Devon because she had been the midwife in Northam, their grandfather started coming to stay with them for extended periods, and Rose and the younger Letts children came to know him well. He would be given the smallest of the three bedrooms at Tobyfield Road; Graham and Gordon woul
d go in with Glenys and Rose in the back room, and Andrew would sleep on the sofa downstairs. A funny old stick, Andrew always thought, when he thought anything about his grandfather, which wasn’t often.

  But Graham, whose life was in the street, thought he could see deeper into the picture than Andrew as usual. Graham had heard his grandfather had a reputation for being studley. It wasn’t just the car and the boiler he looked after. His father and his mother had told him that separately. That his grandfather got by servicing rich women in Devon. So Graham saw him in that light rather than being the butler and the chauffeur and doffing the cap. As a randy old sod. A dirty old devil. He had seen him in action on the estate. His grandfather had lived with a woman in a ’van on the Lakehouse site when Fred West was living there. Graham used to go down and lay carpets and underfelt and he would see old Bill with this woman ’van dweller. ‘Whoa, you should be slowing down at your age!’ But he didn’t. Randy old bugger. He kept on going. It occurred to Graham and Glenys to wonder whether there might not even be something between old Grandfather Letts and their mother, shut off in the house up in Cleeve on their own there after their father had gone. They also wouldn’t have been surprised if he had made off with their grandfather’s money as well as whatever he’d pulled down as his redundancy cheque.

  It wasn’t a lot. Two-to-three thousand pounds in 1976. It wasn’t a lot of money. Daisy Letts had been happy to say goodbye to the money if it also meant seeing the back of her husband. They were continuing to go through a bad time. Things still weren’t well between them. Her nerves were shredded. She had been living on tenterhooks for thirty years because of his violence. And so this money was really like a key to her. Something to unlock this grinding-down, hopeless situation. It was mental and physical cruelty. He was a cruel man, there were no two ways about it. He was probably a schizophrenic. They were a perfectly happy-go-lucky family when he wasn’t there. When he was there, everything changed. And so this money was like a prayer answered and she made it clear to him that he was free to go with it. He could take it and go and she would only hope the best for him. It was the first time he had a bit of money in his pocket and she said to him, ‘You’ve got your chance now. Why don’t you go and see if you can’t take your chance?’ Before the trip to Westward Ho! in the hot summer with Rose and the children, Rose’s father had gone with Fred and found a property in Southgate Street in Gloucester. 214 Southgate Street had formerly been a butcher’s called Finch’s. Mr Finch, the butcher, who had a second shop near the Cross. And they acquired the property and immediately set about turning it into a café, which they would own together. Fred set about it, which was his part of the arrangement. Bill Letts provided the money to pay for the lease and acquire the necessary equipment. And Fred did all the conversion and building work that was needed as his share. He made a start while the others were on holiday in Devon, working nightshifts at the wagon works and doing the rough work for preparing the café for opening during the day. They were close to each other. They were almost neighbours. So he would finish his shift at the wagon works and make an early start, chucking the white tiles and blue tiles off the walls, hardboarding the floor and putting down floor coverings and counters and kitchens and all that. They had all that printed ply panelling all round the walls and they had all the furniture made at a top place at Charlton Kings. It was made out of elm. The backs of the chairs had stars cut out of them and there was a big table along in the window which sooner rather than later would find itself in Cromwell Street as its permanent home. Andrew Letts would have the star-backed chairs when Fred’s and Bill’s café eventually folded, as everybody connected with it except those two could see it was going to, after about fifteen months.

  It was looking well and, although the plan for a granny flat in the cellar came to nothing, Fred offered Bill Letts one of the lodgers’ rooms at Cromwell Street in the autumn of 1976 in the run-up to opening day. Rose was continuing to have a sexual relationship with her father, which Fred encouraged and was very happy about. What he claimed at the end of his life to be less happy about was the sexual relationship between Rose’s father and Anna-Marie. Bill Letts denied that this was something that had ever taken place. More than that: Andrew was there and heard his father tell his mother that he had been kicked out of 25 Cromwell Street by Fred when he objected to Anna-Marie, who was then still only twelve, sleeping with a much older man. He had gone upstairs after hearing a lot of noise, so the story went, and there was a man up there with Anna. He had told him to get out of there. He had told him to get himself out of it, but on his way back down to his room he had met Fred who grabbed him and told him, ‘What goes on in my house is my business, Bill.’ End of story. This was Bill Letts’s story.

  Fred West’s story, found among his prison jottings after he had hanged himself in 1995, was the following. ‘I stopped home [from work] to see Rose. It was about 11 p.m. Rose was in bed, so I went into the bedroom … I didn’t put the light on in the room. I sat at the bottom of the bed. I was telling Rose what had happened to my hand at work [he had injured his thumb while using the drill]. Then Anna came running downstairs and said to Rose, “Grampy’s going to sleep with me” … I went upstairs to him and said, “What’s going on?” Anna was with me. Bill said, “Rose said Anna could sleep with me but Anna’s playing up” … When I got home in the morning Rose and her dad was in the kitchen having breakfast … He said to me, “Do I have to go?” I said, “Yes.” “Where can I go?” I said, “To the café.” There was a flat at the top of the café. “You can go there.”’

  Rose’s attitude to the café was couldn’t-care-less indifference. She knew them too well. She knew her father and she knew Fred and all the money they hadn’t made. And she could tell that the café, which was officially called the Green Lantern although it was the Cumngetit to Fred, was another money-losing scheme. All that would happen was they would end up in debt up to their necks. She didn’t think it was worth wasting her time on. Besides, by the early part of 1977 she would be pregnant again, with the baby due in December. So Rose kept herself separate from this enterprise involving members of her family. It was mostly Fred, who had given up a good job at the wagon works to do it. Rose seems to have decided to hold herself aloof as a vindication of her position: they had ended up camping on her doorstep. In the end they had come to her. She was making a home. She was building a family with a new addition on the way. Rose stayed where she was at home while Fred and her first family played at too many cooks.

  It had taken no time for them all to come round. Glenys with Jim Tyler. Graham and Barbara White, his girlfriend from Stoke Orchard, who had got themselves moved into the flat. Andrew and Jacquie who had got married that summer and hadn’t invited Fred and Rose to the wedding. Gordon was there somewhere as well. This one and that one. Who was ripping off who? Who could rip off who the fastest? Too many chiefs and not enough Indians. Shake hands with Graham. Now count your fingers.

  Ronnie Cooper went in a few times for chips and eggs and to remind Fred that there was still a job there for him any time he wanted. Ronnie had his chips and eggs cooked for him on one occasion by Fred, which was an experience. Fred standing at the range putting his dirty hands on everything and his white eyes and his red mouth in his dirty face. He was as black as the ace of spades. And of course he had a cobble, working for Jim Tyler. Graham Letts was also working for G & D Services, the haulage company run by Jim Tyler. Fred drove a blue diesel minibus van that had been rigged up for him by the dog man in St Michael’s Square who sold them iffy Alsatians. He had built on a roof-rack of scaffolding poles designed to carry eight-feet-by-four-feet sheets of ply that fitted on the top. This van had scaffold poles that they drilled straight through the van and welded on the chassis. It had one massive roof-rack on it. And Fred drove it for Jim, delivering stuff all over the place for him to make money to get the café going. Tyler used to do a lot of ply for this bloody DIY stuff. Working a cobble doing hauling for Jim Tyler. Or perhaps the café was
the cobble and this was Fred’s proper job. It was hard to tell which was which. And all those Letts together was a shambles. They were shambolic. Rose’s family. You could take them but you couldn’t leave them. Rose’s lot. They were soap-operatic. Every day was like a soap opera.

  Just Graham. Even leaving the drink out of it. Leaving the drugs and the drink out of it. Forget the rest and just look at Graham. He had been knocking around with a thirteen-year-old who had one brother who was a bouncer and another brother who was a DJ at Tracy’s nightclub on the bus station. Graham lived with Sandra Johnson* for a while at the end of 1976 above the Crown pub in Cheltenham. She was thirteen, he was eighteen and she was very domesticated and wanted babies. In early 1977 Graham took Sandra down to Bognor Regis in a stolen car for, in his words, a bit of a jaunt. But they ended up being apprehended and Sandra was taken into care as a result of the stolen-car incident. She was placed at Jordan’s Brook House, a former approved school, in Gloucester in May 1977. A month earlier Graham had been sent to borstal for four months’ recall. While he was there, Sandra wrote to him enclosing the picture of a year-old baby saying he was the father. He knew he couldn’t be because the baby was too old and Barbara White had seen Sandra while Graham was in borstal and she wasn’t pregnant. Glenys and Jim Tyler were living next door to Barbara White’s family in Stoke Orchard and Barbara had first met Graham when he had been living with them. She remembered Charmaine and Anna-Marie when they were little and Fred used to leave them with Mrs Nock, a near neighbour. Barbara had always liked Graham but he was with Sandra Johnson. But then just before he was sent back to borstal and Sandra was taken into Jordan’s Brook, Graham ditched Sandra. He came out of borstal in August 1977 and moved into the flat above the café in Southgate Street with Barbara White, who had been working there for just meals and free lodging for Graham’s father. Her job was to serve; Graham’s mother by this point was doing the cooking. Graham ditched Sandra but she wouldn’t stay ditched by him. She wouldn’t accept it. She was a hanger-on and kept appearing to see him. Sandra would pop in to the Green Lantern to see if Barbara was still on the scene. Graham and Barbara were woken up one night by Graham’s mum because Sandra was there with her friend Yvonne, who used to babysit for Glenys and Jim. Yvonne was another Jordan’s Brook girl. Another girl from the home that had been set up to provide care for some of the most difficult and disturbed young people in the country, many with personal histories of degradation and exploitation. By 1977 many girls from Jordan’s Brook had started to find their way to 25 Cromwell Street, which had got itself a reputation for being a place where you could expect a sympathetic reception. Rosemary, the woman in charge there, was nice and pleasant and in no way heavy. She seemed to be very understanding and caring, like a young mum or a big sister. The house was always open and you could always cry on Rosemary’s shoulder.