Brighton Rock: Part VI, Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

Pinkie is waiting for Rose in front of the municipal building. It’s their wedding day and she’s late. He goes walking down the street a bit with Dallow and they stop in front of a news agency where, at the back of the store, there are a number of naughty gifts and books for sale. Dallow tells Pinkie he knows how he feels. He was married once and the nerves got him, too. He says the naughty books never really taught him anything he didn’t know, except for some things about flowers, the raunchiness of which surprised him.

Pinkie wishes Kite were here instead of Dallow—he could talk to Kite—but if Kite were still alive, he wouldn’t be marrying Rose. None of this would have happened. He tells Dallow the story of a girl who went to his school when he was a boy. The girl’s name was Annie Collins and she killed herself when she was fifteen by putting her head on the railway track. She was pregnant at the time with her second child. She’d had her first when she was twelve. Pinkie tells Dallow the father could have been any one of twelve different boys.

Pinkie is in a rare talkative mood. He tells Dallow that he’s read the sappy love stories in the magazines, and he’s read smut, too. All of it’s the same. Dallow is uncomfortable. He tells Pinkie that it’s almost 2 P.M. He really needs to get to the registrar. Pinkie looks down the street and sees Rose walking toward them. Pinkie muses about how Prewitt managed the whole affair by adding two years to Pinkie’s age. Rose has done herself up for the occasion. She has a new hair cut and has put on some makeup. To Pinkie, she looks like a doll you could buy in a shop, one you could pray to but not expect an answer from.

Pinkie asks Rose why she was so late. She tells him she went to church, hoping to confess. She wanted to be in a state of grace when she married him, but the priest wasn’t there. She says that they’re about to commit a mortal sin. Pinkie tells her there’s no use in either of them confessing ever again. Then he starts to lead her to the registrar, struck again by the sense that he needs her.

The hall of the municipal building is tiled like a bathroom. Mr. Prewitt makes jokes as Pinkie and Rose make their way toward the chapel. Rose’s parents have not come. Someone has dropped a rose on the floor. They step over it. Everyone takes a seat in an anteroom where the atmosphere is bland and prosaic. The doors open and a man and wife emerge. The wife looks astonished. Mr. Prewitt leads Rose and Pinkie into a small green room where there are three chairs lined up against the wall. It’s time. Rose is deflated by the spartan nature of the surroundings and ceremony.

It’s over almost before they know it. Pinkie says his vows quickly, feeling shame as he does so. Rose repeats hers as if surprised. The registrar asks about rings, and Pinkie tells him angrily that they don’t have them—this isn’t a church service. Later, they sign the marriage certificate and Pinkie is filled with a strange combination of lightness and gloom. He knows they’ve committed a sin, and it somehow makes him feel like a man. He leads Rose out into the hall where someone has picked up the flower and invites everyone to come and have drinks on him to celebrate the occasion. He thinks of Sylvie stretched out in the back of the Lancia and he is filled with dread.

They all head to a pub around the corner. It’s nearly closing time, but they get drinks anyway. Prewitt offers an awkward toast. Rose, who hasn’t spoken since the ceremony, stares at her reflection in the bar mirror. Dallow asks her what she’s thinking and Pinkie answers for her, because he feels he knows her as well as he knows himself. He says she’s thinking that it wasn’t much of a wedding, and Rose nods. Prewitt says all weddings are equal in the eyes of the law, but Pinkie scoffs at such a suggestion. He knows that he and Rose are in agreement that the ceremony meant nothing.

Still, when the rest of the men leave Pinkie and Rose alone, they’re shy with one another. Pinkie realizes that he should have planned to take her on a honeymoon of some kind. Perhaps a weekend away to a different sea. He offers to take her to the Cosmopolitan for the night. She can’t believe it. He asks where she’s left her bag, but she explains that she has no things, really. Only what she’s wearing. Her parents didn’t give her any money. They’d both gotten into moods and so that was that.

When they get to the Cosmopolitan, the clerk tells Pinkie that there are no more vacant rooms. Pinkie is furious. He tells the clerk that his money is as good as anybody’s, but the clerk, giving Rose a condescending once over, insists that the hotel is completely booked. With tears of humiliation and rage pricking his eyes, Pinkie grabs Rose and they leave the place together. Rose tells him she doesn’t care where they stay. She suggests Frank’s but he vetoes the idea. They decide to head to the pier for the time being.

The sea moves in and out relentlessly. Its motion reminds Pinkie of killing Spicer and the whole chain of events that began with Kite’s death and shows no sign of ending. Rose points to a girl in the crowd that’s staring at Pinkie. It’s Molly Pink, the fat girl Hale chatted up in a futile attempt to keep Pinkie off his trail. She’s with the same friend and Pinkie can tell they’re talking about him. He lies to Rose and says he’s never seen the girls before in his life.

Rose stops in front of a souvenir booth and asks Pinkie to go into a sound studio and record his voice for her. Pinkie tells her not to be silly, and Rose erupts, saying that he’s never gotten her a single thing, not even today, and she has no idea what he wants with her. He tries to calm her and promises he’ll do whatever she says. He just doesn’t understand why she’d want a recording of his voice. Also, they don’t have a record player. She says that if he ever goes away for a while, she can listen to him talk and she likes that idea. She’ll borrow a gramophone if she has to. He goes into the booth and says, “Goddamn, you little bitch, why can’t you go back home forever and let me be?” He hands her the record and tells her he said something loving.

Rose suggests they move on to the covered walkway under the pier. Pinkie feels for a second a rush of sexual desire at the thought of returning to the sight of Hale’s murder. It’s like mingling good and evil. They’re in front of the shops that sell carnival food. Rose wants a stick of Brighton Rock. Pinkie agrees to buy it for her, thinking that he now has her the way Christians have God in the Eucharist: by the guts.

Pinkie enters the candy shop like he owns the place. He knows every square inch of it. There’s something new, though—a wall of broken rock. The cashier says some clumsy men came in and broke a bunch. Pinkie orders two sticks of candy and leaves, impressed with his own cleverness. They eat the candy and Rose says they should probably go somewhere. Pinkie is filled with anxiety at the prospect of the marriage bed. He suggests a movie, but the film they go to see is a romance and his anxieties swirl anew. A clock by the screen shows the time. It’s late. He knows he can’t put it off much longer. A sentimental song accompanies the actor’s lovemaking on screen and Pinkie weeps, envisioning a life free of hate and envy and fear that he knows will never be his.

Pinkie tells Rose roughly that they should go and they head back to Frank’s, the sea seeming to disappear under an airplane, music drifting over them. No one’s awake at Frank’s. Judy left a note telling Pinkie they were out celebrating his wedding. Up in the room, they stand around for a while awkwardly. Rose says she likes his place; it’s homey. She’ll tidy up tomorrow. He says she won’t touch a thing. It’s his cave, he thinks, and she’s an intruder. The bell rings in the hall, but instead of going to answer it Pinkie grabs Rose and begins to make violent love to her. He wants to get it over with.

Pinkie is surprised to feel a tiny bit of tenderness for  Rose during the act. In fact, it wasn’t as horrible as he’d always imagined. He’d exposed himself to another person and she hadn’t laughed. He supposed he was going to Hell, but it was good to have that decided as well. He feels strong, vital, a man finally. The bell continues to ring. Rose is afraid it’s the cops. She tells him she loves him. He runs to answer it, promising to come right back.

It’s Cubitt and he’s very drunk. He tells Pinkie he’s only come back to get his things, but then he says he wishes the two of them could be friends—they’re like brothers, really. Pinkie tells him they were never friends and he isn’t about to take Colleoni’s leavings. Cubitt begins to cry. He asks Pinkie to loan him some money; he’s broke. When Pinkie refuses, his sadness turns to anger. He starts to tell Pinkie he could get him into real trouble. He mentions Hale and Spicer. He tells Pinkie there’s someone who would pay him a lot more money for a lot worse. His speech is garbled by drink. Pinkie isn’t worried. Cubitt, he thinks, is like a professor, going on about the exports and imports of a foreign country, whereas Pinkie has been to the actual jungle and seen the goods.

Rose is waiting for Pinkie on the bed. She’s no longer afraid. She thought it would be the cops. Instead, it was a drunken man, and she’s used to drunken men. Pinkie asks her why she thought the cops would come for him, and she whispers “Kolley Kibber.” Pinkie realizes she knows all about what happened to Hale. She’s known the whole time and she doesn’t care. He says, with a faint trace of admiration that she’s just as bad as he is, and she agrees, staring up at him with devotion.

Later, Pinkie is dreaming. At first, he’s in a schoolyard and he’s the new kid. He’s sick with fear that he’ll be mocked and rejected, but then Kite appears and, for the moment, he is not alone. Kite gives him a razor and Pinkie knows what he must do. The dream changes then, though, and he’s on a pier, tipping into the sea. He scrambles frantically, sure that he’ll drown, but really he’s just in his bed in Paradise Piece and he’s trying to sleep while his parents make love in the other room. He feels dead while they do it. It’s as if he doesn’t exist to them. Then he wakes. The clock strikes three. Relieved to be alone in his room at Frank’s, he goes for a glass of water. Rose calls to him from the bed and he remembers.

No longer exhilarated from the act of love, Pinkie is depressed by the thought that he is now tied to Rose forever. The marriage at the registrar wasn’t fake; it was real, and he will now have to work to keep her love. He won’t be free until the day he dies. He goes out for air and walks toward the channel. While he walks, he notices there’s something in his pocket. It’s a note from Rose in which she says that she will love him forever. No matter what he does, she will always be by his side. Pinkie crumples the paper and almost throws it in the trash, but at the last minute, he holds onto it, thinking it might be useful someday.

On his way back to Frank’s, Pinkie sees an old woman in the gutter. Her face is rotting, and her teeth are discolored. To Pinkie, she seems like the face of damnation. Then he realizes she is praying the rosary and he realizes she is actually, to his surprise, among the saved.