The Sleep of Reason: The James Bulger Case

by David James Smith

  When she was about five she used to get bullied by a girl in the street. Hit ’er back, hit ’er back, Ann’s dad would say. Ann would get hit by her dad, for not hitting her bully.

  Ann and her sister had got their pocket money, only the sister had spent hers. Ann bought some crisps for herself and a friend. Her sister saw them with the crisps and wanted them and told their dad. Dad said give your sister some and Ann said no, she’s spent her money. So Ann got hit for buying some crisps for her friend.

  When she was older, Ann would look back and be unable to remember anything good in her childhood. If her parents loved her they had a funny way of showing it. If she ever got treated by them, bought presents at Christmas, she could not remember.

  The only kindness she would recall was from her dad’s friend. When he’d been round there’d always be money hidden in the house for her to find. She asked her dad for money once, for sweets for school, and he battered her.

  Dad’s friend bought her a china doll. Porcelain. Ann loved it, and kept it in her pram. She had all these steps to get down, so she called her dad. Dad will you take the pram down the steps. No. So she did it herself, dropped the pram, and smashed the china doll’s face. She was heartbroken. They took it to the doll’s hospital and fixed it up, but it was never quite the same.

  Ann used to lie in bed, listening for her dad coming in drunk. She slept terribly, nightmares, sleep walking, the lot. She woke up one night, literally standing on the headboard of the bed, bashing the wall with her hands.

  Another night he pushed Ann’s mum into the girls’ bedroom. He had her over the sister’s bed, and mum was screaming to Ann, get the police, get the police. Ann was in bed and when she got out he went for her and she took a battering for going after the police. Ann and her mum never spoke about it afterwards. They never spoke about any of it.

  She was older then, about fifteen or sixteen, and was seeing Bobby, her first boyfriend, who was to become her husband. They’d met while she was still at school. Ann would not remember why she was attracted to Bobby. She could only think it was because he was the first fella who ever paid her any attention. The sooner she got married the sooner she could leave home.

  Ann’s dad didn’t like Bobby very much and when he came round to say they were getting married, Ann’s dad said he’d give it twelve months before they divorced. Bobby asked for his permission and he said, you look after ’er, now piss off’ome, lad, piss off ’ome. When Bobby had gone he kicked Ann round the house. You’re pregnant, aren’t you? I’m not. She wasn’t. He took the belt to her.

  Ann was running away once, to Bobby, and her dad came after her and caught her on some steps by the pensioners’ home, near the Hermitage pub. He threw her down the steps — only three steps — and split her head open. He dragged her home, past a lot of people who did nothing, and as he walked he said, just look at these houses and look at these trees. ’Cos you’re not gonna fuckin’ see them again. I’m gonna kill you when I get in.

  He got her on the floor in the kitchen, by the back door, and used his old army belt with the big buckle.

  Ann was working by then, doing wiring at Plessey’s. Three pairs of tights, black tights, for Monday morning, so no one’d see the marks on her legs.

  She could not remember her sister or brother being beaten. It was always the cheeky hard-faced cow. Who knows, perhaps she enjoyed it. If he told her she was to be in by nine she’d always get back at five past, pushing her luck, asking for it.

  There was one night when she was ten minutes late. Right, he said, do you want to stay in for a week or do you want a hiding? The thought of staying in a week was unbearable. I’ll have a hiding. So he battered her and he said for bein’ so fuckin’ hard-faced you’re stayin’ in for a week as well. And she had to.

  Ann didn’t go out places too often because there wasn’t much point if you had to be in by nine. She wouldn’t usually bother getting dressed up to go out, and it was a rare day if she looked at herself and felt good going out the door.

  It was about a week before the wedding when she went to the Wookie Hollow ’cos Gerry Marsden was on. She made the effort that night, and actually got a kiss off Gerry Marsden. She didn’t get in till gone midnight, and her dad was waiting up to take it out on her, because he’d said be in by eleven. Still, that kiss almost made it worthwhile.

  Bobby saw the marks on Ann’s legs and he knew, but they never discussed it. There was no one to tell, and what was there to tell? Plenty of people got battered.

  Ann’s mother was always too afraid to do anything, except one night when two of her husband’s mates brought him home and he was polatic, really gone, and they said where do you want us to put him, and Ann’s mum said there, in the garden. So they put him in the garden, and that was where he woke up the following morning. Ann felt good about that.

  On the day she got married he gave her a whisky and said, I’m made up you’re goin the right way. Just like Jekyll and Hyde.

  Horrible.

  He always drank in The Anfield, which they all called the bottom house, and Bobby’s family drank in The Walton Hotel, which was the top house, and eventually got renamed The Top House because that was how everyone knew it.

  Ann and Bobby got engaged in the top house, on her seventeenth birthday, and were in there after the wedding at St Mary’s. It was like a second home and of course they were all back there for that first Christmas, when Ann and Bobby were newly-weds. Bobby said come on, we’ll go and see your dad in The Anfield.

  Ann put two fingers in her throat to show how she felt, but they went anyway. Her father bought her a drink and put his arm around her in front of all his mates. Here’s my baby daughter, like he was dead proud. Ann was heaving.

  (After the trial, after her son had been convicted of murder, Ann phoned her parents to tell them a few home truths. Her dad was sobbing down the phone. I’m sorry I battered yer. I’m sorry. Ann felt nothing for him. In fact, though she was crying too, she quite enjoyed his distress.)

  Ann wore white for the wedding. She had made the dress herself. She had always played grown-ups when she was little, with her dolls and her pram, and she always thought being married, being a mum, would be just like a fairy tale. She wanted two boys and a girl. The boys would look after the girl, because no one had ever looked after her.

  Looking back, she thinks she was rather stupid in those early days of the marriage. Shy, young… too young to have kids, probably. Bobby was only her age, but he always seemed older and more mature.

  Bobby was the third youngest of eight, four boys and four girls, and his father had died when he was still a child. The paternal role had been taken on by the elder brothers, and they were strict in imposing discipline.

  The Thompsons were a Walton family, and Bobby had attended Walton St Marys School. Like many other local kids, he played on the railway line by Walton Lane. There was an upward slope of the track near there, for trains coming out of the docks. Freight trains with heavy loads would trundle slowly up the hill, and the kids could leap on, and help themselves to the cargo.

  Ann and Bobby started married life in a flat in Birchfield Road, off Walton Village. Then they moved in with his mother for a while, still in Birchfield, and paid key money to a landlord to get a house of their own, across the road.

  It was while they were at his mothers that Ann fell pregnant for the first time, with David. In the ensuing nine years she would have five children, all boys: David, Peter, Ian, Philip and little Bobby, who was born in Fazakarley Hospital on 23 August 1982. Ann convinced herself every time that it would be a girl. It just never happened and she kept on trying. She reckoned big Bobby wanted a football team.

  Those nine years were difficult and Ann felt no more accepted by most of big Bobby’s large family than she did by her own. At weekends she’d sit looking out of the window, watching her husband go off to the top house with his family. There was no one to mind the kids, so she stayed at home. There was no telly, which might explain
all the babies, but didn’t help when she was stuck indoors on her own.

  Big Bobby was always in the pub and when he came home after he’d been drinking he’d be aggressive and sometimes violent. It was a volatile marriage from the start. The wedding certificate got shredded in the first week.

  As far as Ann was concerned, if you argued with Bobby you argued with all the Thompsons, his mother included. She had a miscarriage after David, at three months, and was five months gone with the next pregnancy when they were all round his mothers arguing one Saturday night after going to the pub. Ann said she could keep her bloody son. Go on, she told Bobby, hide behind yer mother. He and his brothers flung Ann down the hallway and jammed her in the door and she lost the baby not long after.

  One night Bobby dragged her down the street, coming home from the pub. She’d had all that with her father, and didn’t need it again. Only once, in that first year, did Ann leave him and go back to her mother. Bobby came round and fetched her and she never walked out again.

  He’d come in drunk with a takeaway and shout for Ann to fetch him a fork. When he’d finished he’d say now go an’ wash it, and she’d say go an’ bloody wash it yer bloody self, and he’d drag her through the kitchen by her hair, fill the sink up and push her face in the water. Then she’d go up to bed and he’d come and beat her for going to sleep.

  Bobby was an apprentice electrician and, even when he was doing jobs on the side, there was never very much money. Ann gave up Plessey’s when the kids came along. They just had to make do, but it was hard to cope.

  In 1977 David, then aged four, was placed on the child protection register for physical abuse. He was seen with a black eye and a burn mark and he said his mum had pushed him against a door, hitting his head. Ann said there was an innocent explanation and the allegation of abuse was not substantiated. When there was no repeat of the incident, David was taken off the register, in 1979.

  Philip had just been born, in November 1978, when Ann took an overdose of Valium and ended up in hospital. There was nothing exactly she could say that triggered the attempt at suicide. She didn’t even plan it particularly. She just couldn’t take any more, and did it.

  She saw a psychiatrist the next day and he said, you going to do this again, and she said no, and went home and that was that. Social services arranged for the boys to go to nursery, which helped take the pressure off Ann.

  The kids were always getting shouted at and battered. Big Bobby would put his face in theirs. See the evil in me eyes, twat. Wallop.

  It was funny, when the Ripper case was going on, they all used to joke how big Bobby looked like Peter Sutcliffe, with his dark beard and his eyebrows that met in the middle. There was something in his eyes, too. He wasn’t really like the Ripper, of course, but it was funny all the same.

  He told the kids once he was puttin’ ’em in a home, ’cos they were gettin’ out of hand. He put them in his van and drove round to this big old house and said there’s the home, that’s where yer goin’ if you don’t behave. It was just a house, not really a home, but that kept them quiet for a week or so, the thought of going to this place that didn’t exist.

  When David got older, big Bobby caught him smoking and he told him if he caught him again he’d make David eat them. Next time he found David with ciggies he made him put them in his mouth and chew them. He didn’t actually have to swallow them.

  The family moved from Birchfield to Belmont Road after little Bobby was born, and life became more stable, Ann and big Bobby growing more used to each other, and each other’s little ways.

  Bobby had been camping as a kid, and one week he said why don’t we borrow our Val’s tent and give it a try, and if you like it we’ll get a bigger tent. He had a Cortina then, so they loaded it up with the camping gear and the boys and went off to Mostyn in North Wales for the weekend.

  They all fished and cooked and everyone liked it, so they got the bigger tent and started going regularly, first to Wales and later to Formby Point, and to a caravan site at Banks, just north of Southport, where they had a clubhouse and country and western nights with live bands.

  Bobby was a better electrician now, taking on bigger jobs, rewiring houses, usually on the side, cash in hand. There was a bit more money to go round. He did a job at a place with a big old caravan in the garden. The man had just bought a new one, so he gave the old one to Bobby in part payment, and he towed it home and put it outside the house.

  They cleaned the caravan out, took it to Formby Point a few times, and, at the end of the summer they really went to work on it. New cupboards, new curtains, re-covering all the seats… Bobby picked up some royal blue ship paint, knock-off, and they kept it in the caravan toilet before they started painting.

  Ann and Bobby were at their allotment one day and when they came home someone had driven off with the caravan. A neighbour had noted the registration of the car that took it, so they told the police. When the police finally found the car, not far away, on the Walton Lane estate, it had been painted royal blue. The caravan was never recovered, so it was back to the eight-berth tent.

  The camping and the fishing went on for about four years. Ann was almost happy then. It was always good to get out of the house, and in the long school holidays they took to staying in Banks. Bobby would go off to work, and Ann would stay there with the boys and the doberman they’d got, whose name was Rocky. At weekends they’d be in the country club, sometimes dressed up in big cowboy hats and all.

  At Banks Ann and Bobby met Tommy and Melanie from Salford. They’d take turns in each other’s tents, playing cards at night and having a drink.

  In the last summer, the summer of 1988, Tommy brought another couple over and said, this is Barbara and Jack, I’ve been tellin ’em about yer family and the kids, an’ how we all have a crackin’ laugh.

  Barbara and Jack didn’t stay over the whole summer but they came and went at weekends, and all three couples were very friendly. One week Barbara came with watches for the boys and Ann said, isn’t that nice of yer but yer shouldn’t be spendin’ all yer money on the kids like that. Barbara said, oh I’ve got loads of money and no one to spend it on. Her daughter was grown up with a baby and she had two boys in the army. Her and Jack had a nice house in Oswaldtwistle, near Blackburn.

  After that, Barbara was always bringing things in. A bottle of vodka for when they played cards, other gifts for the boys. They were at a car boot sale on the Saturday, and Barbara said to Ann, look, I’ve bought this watch for big Bobby ’cos he hasn’t got one, has he? Ann said, no, but yer all right, I’ll get ’im it. No, said Barbara, I’ve got loads of money, and she gave Bobby the watch.

  The following weekend she came into the country club with her camera, taking pictures of all the kids. Come on, she said to Ann, you get in the middle of ’em. Ann was 18 stone by this time. She’d started ballooning at Plessey’s, when she had money to spend on sweets for the first time. They used to tell her it was puppy fat, but she was a bit old for that now. Ann didn’t want her picture taken, thanks very much.

  In the end Ann posed with Bobby in their straw hats and with the fish they’d caught that day. Ann with her nine-pound pike.

  Ann and Bobby went home that week and on the Thursday night, before he went off to play darts, Bobby said, we won’t go to the campsite this weekend, eh? Ann said, bloody right we will, I’ve got them kids all week an’ that’s my only break an’ I enjoy goin’ the country club.

  So they went and on the Saturday Ann met an elderly woman she knew at the site who said, what’s wrong with Barbara today, she’s awful funny; I’ve just been over to see her and she’s all of a flutter; I’m sure she’s goin through the change or somethin’, ’cos when I asked what was the matter she said, nuttin, I’m just thinkin’ of what I’m gonna do.

  In the club that night, Barbara had brought a bottle of rum, and the only one that drank that was big Bobby. It still never clicked with Ann. She was pouring it out, and she and Bobby danced, which didn’t bot
her Ann because they always danced and, being that big, she preferred to keep her seat.

  At the end of the evening, Bobby got drink spilt on him. They’re all bladdered and, next thing, off comes his shirt and his pants and he’s sat there in his boxies. Ann had a pint in front of her. She said, ’ere, yer might as well take them off an all, and threw the pint in his lap and walked out.

  She was just getting into bed when Jack turned up, saying you’d better get round to those two, they’ve pissed off together. Don’t act silly, Ann said. She’d never known Bobby go off with anyone. But Jack said she’d better do something, so Ann threw her coat on over her nightie and her dressing gown and walked round by the club and there were Bobby and Barbara kissing and cuddling as they came out of the door.

  Just leave her alone, Bobby tells Ann, just leave her alone. Ann grabbed at the sleeve of Barbara’s dress and it just came off in her hands, so she flung it and as Barbara was looking round for it, she grabbed at the dress again and pulled the front away so everything was showing.

  Jack appears with a knife. I’ll bloody kill yer, I’ll bloody kill yer. Don’t be stupid, says Ann, go and put yer knife away. It’s not the first time she’s done it, you know, Jack said. You’re the fifth family she’s split up, but she’ll be back. Twelve months and she’ll be back. He got in his car and drove home to Oswaldtwistle. Bobby and Barbara took a taxi and went off together. Ann was left with six kids, an eight-berth tent and a van she couldn’t drive.

  In the morning, as soon as it was light, Ann phoned Bobby’s mother and asked for Al to come and fetch them. His mum said, oh, our Robert wouldn’t have buggered off with somebody. I’m tellin’ yer, ’e ’as, said Ann.

  At dinner time, while she was still waiting for Al, Bobby turned up with Barbara and put her in the front of the van and said, if you touch ’er I’ll fuckin’ kill yer. I’ll just leave youse all here. He started collecting all the stuff. They were all going to drive back from Banks together in the van. Ann had been up all night, turning it over in her head. If I could get that lead round her neck as we’re drivin along, let’s see what he does then. But she sacked that and grabbed the teapot instead, lunged forward and embedded it in Barbara’s head. The last thing she saw was all the blood, then Bobby grabbed her and she woke up on the floor, and he drove off, leaving her with the kids again. The kids were in a right state by this time.