Brighton Rock: Part I, Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

Charles Hale is in Brighton on assignment from the Messenger, a newspaper. He is distributing Kolley Kibber cards around the seaside town, trying his best to be spotted by a loyal Messenger reader who, once he or she successfully identifies Hale and recites the pre-ordained speech, will win the newspaper’s grand prize. Those who find cards will be rewarded with 10 schillings each. Hale has a strict itinerary to follow but manages anyway to squeeze in several gin and tonics while he works. Convinced he will be murdered soon, he aloofly observes a seemingly never-ending parade of tourists, gathered in Brighton to celebrate the Whitsun holiday, or Pentecost.

Hale is from Brighton and has a love/hate relationship with his home. He is drawn to the piers and peep shows, but, at the same time, finds the town’s more tourist-heavy sections distasteful and lonely. Upon hearing a ballad drifting out of a pub, he goes inside to see a buxom woman whom everyone calls Lily entertaining her fellow bar flies. While Hale watches her, a young, intense, and shabbily dressed man addresses him, calling him “Fred.” Hale tells the man, often referred to in the text as “the Boy” but who will later be identified as Pinkie Brown, that his name isn’t Fred. Then he invites the young man to have a drink with him. The young man opts for a grapefruit squash. Hale has a double whiskey. The young man shoots hate-filled looks at both Lily and Hale.

Hale eventually admits to Pinkie that he is, indeed, the Fred he is looking for. He offers the young man a 10 shilling prize. Then he says he can have the grand prize if he’d prefer: 10 guineas. Disgusted, the young man throws his glass to the floor and tells the servers Hale will pay for the damage. Hale watches Lily some more and, fixated on her large breasts, feels as if he were looking at life itself while, at the same time, preparing for his own death. He is doubly convinced now that the young man and his compatriots plan to kill him.

The only other customer in the bar is asleep. Still, Hale comforts himself with the thought that no one would dare kill him in broad daylight with witnesses nearby. Lily invites Hale to join her for a drink. He is reluctant to drink anymore and asks if she might come to dinner with him, hoping her company might save him from the young man and his cronies. Lily finds his forwardness amusing. Hale sees that, as a newspaperman on a good salary, he is out of touch with Lily and her crowd. At one time he might have known how to connect with her, but he can’t quite manage it now.

Lily asks Hale if he’s okay. He looks sick. He stares at her breasts and wishes he could get lost in the safety promised there. Instead, he leaves the bar and mixes again with the crowd on the street, marveling at three old ladies in a horse-drawn carriage whose lives seem remarkably peaceful and easy compared to his. He watches women walk by, chattering like parrots, and a mounted policeman pass. Hale cannot ask the policeman for help. He feels as if he is beyond help, and he knows that the young man and his gang are following his whereabouts closely. They must have purchased a Messenger themselves, so they know where he’ll be and when. A poor man sells razor blades on the corner, reminding Hale that Kite, a Brighton mob boss, was killed with one.

Hale spots Cubitt, a large man with red hair. He is leaning up against a letterbox. Hale knows Cubitt is waiting for him. Determined to thwart the gang’s plans to kill him, Hale strides off in the opposite direction, hoping to pick up a girl eager to be shown a good time. This is his plan for salvation, but when he gets to the pier where young women preen on deck chairs, they seem to sense his desperation and turn away from him, laughing. Hale is humiliated and ashamed. He decides to pick out the most unattractive girl among them, settling on a fat girl covered in acne. The girl tells him she would be happy to join him for lunch, but she has a friend with her and doesn’t want to leave her behind. If he had a friend, they could be a party of four. Otherwise, no dice.

Almost on cue, Pinkie appears and Molly, the girl he’d been chatting up, thinks that he is Hale’s friend. Pinkie does not correct her, and Molly says that she and her friend, Delia, would now be overjoyed to accompany the two men to a nearby restaurant. Hale, unwilling to make a scene thanks to his stubborn pride, nearly goes with them, but at the last minute he breaks away and heads back down the pier where Lily sits by herself, singing a Victorian ballad about lilies and mourning shrouds. She tells Hale that someone has stolen her bag which contained 10 bob and a cache of love letters from her ex-husband, Tom.

Lily, whose real name is Ida, is waiting for some men to return from the bathroom. It gradually dawns on her that these men, who treated her to a snack in the pub, probably stole her bag and aren’t coming back. She tells Hale that they’ll get their comeuppance one day. She is not one to let injustice go unanswered. Hale admires her breasts and legs while she reclines on the deck chair and, looking around, he is relieved to see that Pinkie and Cubitt are nowhere to be seen. In Ida, Hale sees a lover and a mother. Her body radiates comfort and sensuality. She happily talks about Tom, his desire to get her back, and his passionate love letters. She won’t be reuniting with him, though. She hopes to marry money instead.

Ida asks Hale his name and he tells her it’s Fred even though it’s really Charles. Ever since he was young, Hale was attracted to secrecy even though, he admits now, it’s that attraction that has landed him in trouble now. They talk a bit about horses, and Hale suggests Ida put her money on Black Boy in the four o’clock race. She says she never ignores a good tip, even though Black Boy is running under 20 to one odds. Hale asks Ida to come with him into town, but she talks him into taking a ride around the Palace Pier instead. She wants to make a day of fun out of it, and in the cab Hale kisses her, spotting Cubitt’s car in the rearview mirror. Ida worries that Hale is sick, and he tells her that doctors have given him a death sentence.

Ida says sick men are always glomming on to her; it must be her motherly looks. Then she questions Hale’s claims further and he admits he’s not ill. They get out of the cab in the middle of a crowd gathered around a huckster who’s selling watches. Ida wants money from Hale so she can duck into the women’s bathroom and wash herself. Hale is desperate for her to stay by his side, but he relents, and Ida, touched by what she assumes is Hale’s romantic attachment to her, takes a quick shower. When she emerges from the lavatory four minutes later, Hale is gone. She supposes he, too, is in the bathroom, and she buys a watch from the street vendor, thinking she’ll bet the change on Black Boy in honor of Fred. It is one in the afternoon.