by Gordon Burn
Fred West was interested only in parts of people – usually their depersonalized genitals – rather than in whole, integrated human beings. This ability he had to perceive subjects as mere objects. He had started at an early age to build up a collection of photographs of vaginas. And he had a set of pictures that he had taken of Rose’s vagina in various states of engorgement. Rose holding herself open to his gaze. He showed these around as ‘tasters’ to men he met on jobs or in pubs in the days when he was still using pubs and trying to get people to go back home with him and give Rose a ‘seeing to’. ‘Meat shots.’ ‘Hamburger shots’, in the jargon of the world of home-made pornography and contact magazines with which they would become increasingly involved as the years went on. Catalogues, contact books, subscription clubs, coded small ads in privately circulated magazines. Magazines dedicated to the worship of parts.
By definition he saw black men as sexual savages and potential superstud figures like ‘Shaft’. Intrinsically wild, dangerous, rough, ‘untamed’ in every sense of the word. King Dicks. In touch with some primal, sexual energy. The classic stereotype. The faces, the heads and, by extension, the minds and experiences of Rose’s black ‘clients’ were not as important as the close-up pictures of their genitals he liked to take. Zooming in. Coming up close. Always this obsession with fitting large things into small holes. This fixation. This obsession with size and dimension and the sexual superiority of his Jamaican neighbours. Black men are big boys.
They built up an enormous collection of dildos and vibrators and other prostheses and sex aids and some of the sex equipment they had was huge. Rose learned to bring bigger and bigger objects inside herself and he liked to watch this, and later film it. They amassed more and more and bigger and bigger sexual accessories and vibrators. They kept them in drawers. Under the beds. In a big black trunk in Rose’s special room. He had special names for some of them. The Eiffel Tower. The Exocet. And his favourite, a fourteen-inch black rubber phallus that he christened the ‘cunt-buster’ and was always telling his older children, when they were still children, that they could borrow if they liked. There were pictures of Rose wearing this black dildo strapped around her in her special room, and also pictures on display of Rose having sex with some of the black men who regularly came around.
The first house they moved to in Gloucester was what Rose regarded as a ‘coloureds’ house’. After only a few weeks in Clarence Road in Cheltenham, they moved to a house that Frank Zygmunt had offered them overlooking Gloucester Park. In April 1970, Fred and Rose and Charmaine and Anna-Marie moved into 10 Midland Road in Gloucester which it didn’t please Rose to discover was full of the blacks. Jamaican immigrants and their families. Thought of by Rose, who had never met a black person in her life before let alone lived close to one, as ‘the blacks’. She didn’t know Jamaicans then and she didn’t know Gloucester and she was too young to know if it was a good or bad place.
In 1970 West Indian men still far outnumbered West Indian women in Gloucester. But the imbalance was nothing like it had been twenty years earlier before the women came over in numbers to join their husbands and boyfriends and fathers and keep them in order. By 1970 the women were firmly and domestically dug in and the golden age of the Jamaican male on the rampage was over. The numbers in the congregations of the many mainly black churches were swelled by women. The New Testament Church of God, to take one example, had its beginnings in the living room of a Mr Wright in Howard Street, one of the many small streets running into Midland Road. He started to have prayer meetings at his house and there were only seven people then. Then they managed to get a little hall in Park Road which was rented on Wednesday and Sunday nights. The congregation grew and they bought a church building in Cromwell Street and painted it a happy blue. From there they expanded into the present home of the flourishing New Testament Church of God in Stroud Road.
At the beginning, many Jamaicans had lived in and around Wellington Street and Cromwell Street, closer to the city centre. But gradually the heart of the black community shifted to the Midland Road area on the other side of Gloucester Park. And this is where Fred came with Rose and the children in spring 1970. What he didn’t tell her was that they were moving into a coloureds’ house. She didn’t know what a Jamaican looked like close up and all of a sudden they’re moving into a house full of them. It was so alien to her. Different ways of cooking, unfamiliar smells and such a job to understand what they were saying. Fred said it wouldn’t be long, and they did have two rooms, a shared kitchen and use of a garden for the girls. The bathroom was on the first floor, and afterwards she would remember that the young Jamaican who lived in the flat up there had tried it on with her. She was four months pregnant with Heather at the time and he forced her into a corner and started to force himself on her and she had to fight him off. But after a couple of months they were on the move to another of Frank Zygmunt’s properties not far away, in fact only the next main street over, on Parkend Road, still near the park.
This was better. It was the middle flat in the house and St Paul’s, the school where Charmaine and Anna-Marie were about to start going, was just around the corner at the top of a narrow terraced street like Coronation Street. The brook that runs along the southern edge of the park was near by and it was somewhere Charmaine and Anna-Marie liked to go. Being right close to the park was good. But Fred was getting on very friendly terms with Mr Zygmunt who seemed a lonely sort of a man, for what reason they could never understand. Fred was still working at Cotswold Tyres in Cheltenham during the day, then coming home and doing odd jobs and building and emergency patching-up work for Frank Zygmunt at night. More and more work for Mr Zygmunt, who was buying up houses and wanting them filled as quickly as possible, and coming home later and later. Coming home black and staying black. Black from the tyre works and black from the building and staying black and rarely washing. Then one night Fred brought Mr Zygmunt around to meet Rose and he said he would find them a better place and one with a garden, Fred being such a good worker and so useful to him. So back they went to Midland Road, only to number 25 not number 10, and Fred said they would settle for a bit longer this time. Mr Zygmunt gave them his own flat occupying the ground floor at Midland Road and left behind a few scraps of furniture such as chairs and a sofa for them, but they were living carpetless on bare boards. The houses had been villas and many had servants’ entrances. But like every other area this close to the city centre, Midland Road and the many smaller streets running into it had deteriorated over the years. They had a front room which was their bedroom, a middle dining room which the children used to sleep in and a kitchen all going off a long corridor running from front to back. They had to share a bathroom on the first floor.
You could see the park out of the window at the front of the house. The front room of their house was raised several feet above pavement level and you could see the park and the black and white timbered café at the centre of it, the people coming and going from there; the black and white lavatory building and the dog walkers and the tennis courts. Cromwell Street, their eventual destination, was diagonally across to the right from here. But a number of obstacles came in between the park and Midland Road. There was the busy main road carrying traffic out of Gloucester to Bristol and the south. And there was the raised railway embankment which, at that time, brought trains right past the front of the house. Big goods trains rumbling past just yards away in the night causing vibration and a din, plus the traffic. Where they were looked out on the park which was really a field, open and full of light. But Anna-Marie’s adult memories of the flat in Midland Road, where they would spend three summers, was that it was a dark place. The curtains were always closed or perhaps it was a blanket that was hung at the window. She would remember it as being dark in that flat and always cold. Dark and cold with the windows rattling from the wind and the trains rattling by. ‘The witches are trying to get in,’ the girls would tell each other and hang on to one another giggling under the blankets.
Charmaine and Anna-Marie had been in and out of local-authority homes and foster homes ever since they left Scotland, a total of four years. Sometimes they were kept together and other times they lived apart. Sometimes Rena went to visit them and sometimes she didn’t. When she did she had a tendency to take Charmaine out with her and leave Anna-Marie behind. When their father had them there were always different women around to call mummy and they didn’t know who they were. They would get to know them and then, like Ann McFall, they would disappear. There was always a lot of trouble with social workers telling him he had to get some stability into the situation or they would take the children and keep them permanently in care.
The children were stubborn. It didn’t surprise anybody that they were disturbed. Charmaine wouldn’t do anything Rose told her to do because Rose wasn’t her real mother and her real mother was coming back to get her any day. ‘You’re not my mum. So no.’ That was Charmaine. Char. She would go out of her way to antagonize and aggravate Rose. And never cry. Rose or anybody could do anything to her and she would never cry. Anna-Marie was very much Daddy’s girl. At this age and even when she was older she used to tell her dad that she was going to marry him. Her and her dad were always together. There was a competitive element entering the relationship between Anna-Marie and Rose involving the father of one of them and the boyfriend of the other. Anna-Marie used to call her ‘Rose’, but her father told her off. ‘That’s your mum now. You’ve got to call her mum.’ Which she was very reluctant to do. Six plays sixteen.
The crux of the problem was that Fred was never there. He had a new job delivering milk for Model Dairies which saw him leaving the house when some people were just going to bed. Three o’clock was the middle of the night. A new job to add to the job he already had at Cotswold Tyres. Then it would be home from work at night, have something to eat and straight back out. He would do up people’s cars for them or be out working with Frank. Rewiring. Roofing. Whatever. Widening his circle of West Indian friends. He just worked. It was even a problem for her to get him to bed at night. They had been a couple for under six months at this point and she never saw him. The children never saw their father. She never saw him. He just worked. Even one morning when she left the paraffin heater tilted on a carpet and paraffin spilled and the children’s bedroom caught fire, it wasn’t enough to drag him away from work. ‘You’ll have to get on with it. I’m not leaving work.’ The fire brigade came. She phoned him but he wouldn’t come.
The children were stubborn and always pushing her. They seemed to go out of their way to antagonize and aggravate her. Not so much Anna-Marie. Anna-Marie was Charmaine’s shadow. But it frustrated Rose that she couldn’t curb and control Charmaine the way she wanted. Her father’s way of expressing his domination of his children had been by assigning them jobs to do. The morning duty rota followed by his inspection, followed, almost invariably, by one of his violent lashings out, hitting whoever was closest with whatever was at hand. He used to flip. He would just blow. And Rose would flip and lash out at Charmaine and Anna-Marie with no warning. Give them the back of her hand for not stirring the gravy in the right way or not mashing the potatoes properly. ‘Your fucking fault. You should have done it properly.’ Anna-Marie was taken to the hospital one morning to have stitches put in her scalp. The cause given was a household accident. The accident involved Rose hitting Anna-Marie in the head with a breakfast bowl because she was taking too long at the kitchen sink. They each had to wash their bowl when they finished their cereal and Anna-Marie was waiting for Charmaine to wash hers when Rose, who she refused to call mum, let her have it with a bowl. She was a tomboy and falling off things and all sorts. She had to have a number of stitches to her head wound as a consequence of her ‘fall’.
One morning Tracy, the little girl from upstairs, burst into their kitchen to see if she could borrow some milk. She knocked and went in without waiting for an answer and found Charmaine, her first best friend Char, standing on an old wooden chair with her hands held behind her by a buckled leather belt and Char’s mother, the lady who lived with Char’s father, with her hand took back and ready to hit her with a long wooden spoon. ‘I’m going with my mammy shortly,’ Charmaine would tell her, ‘so I’m not taking no orders off you.’
The children had jobs to do. Rose made them do most of the household chores and if they didn’t do them right she’d erupt. Vacuuming, cleaning, dusting, washing up. They would set and prepare the table for meals, help with the cooking, wash up, tidy their rooms and the rest of the house and do most of the washing and ironing. Charmaine was made to do more because she was more resentful. They were not allowed to play. Apart from Tracy from upstairs, the upstairs neighbours’ daughter, they had no friends at all. Tracy was different. She was already in the house. But they weren’t allowed to bring anybody home. They’d be locked in their bedroom. Sometimes they’d be tied together. They weren’t allowed to communicate much. They weren’t allowed to talk. If they wanted to talk they had to whisper. They’d be in trouble for talking. A slap on the face or a wet belt across the legs. A broom across the head. Their mouths were taped so if they were hit people couldn’t hear them; there were people upstairs. Then she would carry on with what she was doing as if nothing had happened.
Rose made no attempt to hide her cruel streak. And on the rare occasions when their father was there he didn’t seem to care anyway. ‘Your mum is doing that because she loves you. It’s for your own good.’ She didn’t try to hide the beatings. If anything she did the opposite. She seemed to enjoy lashing out and clipping them and hurling things at them in front of their father. It was rare for him to lose his temper with them or hit them himself but he never objected to Rose doing the ‘disciplining’ as he called it. A kindly word from Fred was often followed by a thump from Rose. ‘Make sure you hit them where it doesn’t show,’ he would tell her, a phrase often spoken by her own mother in Rose’s own, still very recent childhood. And there would be a look then that flashed briefly between them that said there was something between them and nobody else was quite in on this.
Rose started to feel Heather coming on a Friday in October. No pains, just uncomfortable. Friday, 16 October 1970. Heather was born on the Saturday morning at a quarter to three. No problems, just a couple of stitches. Six weeks before Rose turned seventeen. When she got home Fred had the cradle all ready, the pram was put together and polished and the girls were really excited. So, a new way of life. It was hard work being up with Heather and then up with Fred and then up with the girls, seeing them off to school. But she soon got used to it and made up for lost sleep during the day.
But Heather was an awkward baby. And it was the dark nights. It was dark in the morning and nearly dark again by four. She had to get up to Heather in the night. Sometimes three or four times a night. Sixteen, still not quite seventeen yet, and Heather was fractious. Crabby, whatever you want to call it. Fractious. And to Charmaine and Anna-Marie just pure nastiness. If you were cleaning or dusting you were always conscious that she was there watching you. Because it was very much with Rose her way was the right way. And if she’s putting herself out to show you how to do it properly, you should be grateful and learn to do it that way. After a while, you learned to get it right quite quick. And if not, look out. Because she could kick you, punch you. It got to the point where she would twist you at the throat and you can’t breathe, which is a horrible feeling. She had a look that she would look at you, and it would literally paralyse you. Fri
ghten you. Who could know where such anger would come from. When Rose was angry she would literally froth at the mouth.
Being beaten up by Rose was like going ten rounds with Frank Bruno but without the laughs later, Anna-Marie would one day say. Rose pulling their hair, dragging them by the hair, kicking, swearing, shouting. Rose in an ecstasy of anger like a performance. Like she would soon perform sex. Bellowing and screaming with the windows open so that the neighbours could hear and the children were ashamed to go out in the street. The notorious caravan holiday one year in a year soon coming up when they would leave the windows open so the sounds of her pleasure – she would scream all the things she had learned from the porno films like ‘Fuck me harder’ and ‘I’m going to come … I’m coming!’ at the top of her voice – would carry across the site at night. The caravan would shake and people would come out of their own caravans to see what was happening and Rose would go on screaming and carrying on. She would carry on and the children would hide and pretend that they weren’t with her. There was a performance aspect to the sex as there was to the violence she unleashed in the flat at Midland Road against Fred’s children, Charmaine and Anna-Marie. A strong suggestion that she was using the children to test the boundaries. That they were testing each other’s boundaries and using the children as the means by which to do it. Rose out to impress Fred by her audacity as a performer. Fred out to impress Rose by his impassivity as an audience. His disregard. His excited detachment. She would drag them into the bedroom and tape up their mouths. Tear a piece of tape off and tape it across their mouths. She would tie them up, sometimes together, sometimes on the bed. She would use very much whatever she could get hold of. For dusters Rose used to always rip up old sheets. Sometimes she’d rip them in strips. Sometimes she’d put old sheet in their mouths as a gag to keep them quiet. Or pull them really tight across it. Like a ‘bit’, isn’t it? Like a horse’s mouth. Like a bridle on a horse. Or she would use them to tie their arms or legs. Strips of sheet or washing line. Straps. Tie their hands behind their backs or sometimes tightly in front of them. They might be tied to the bed with their legs spreadeagled or bound together. Anything. The abuse and the violent assaults against his young daughters. The things he was prepared to be a spectator to.
