Brighton Rock: Part VII, Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

Pinkie and Rose are with Judy and Dallow at the same café where the men convened the afternoon Hale was killed. Dallow is musing about moving to the country, all four of them. Why not? he says; they probably have sixty years of their lives yet to live. The thought is too much for Pinkie. So is the sight of Ida staring at them across the pier. He asks Rose to take a walk with him and they head to the shooting booth where he won the doll. His aim isn’t as good today, though, and he leaves empty handed, suggesting to Rose that they take a ride into the country. He tells the man in the shooting booth that they’re headed to Hastings. The man says he doesn’t care where they go.

Pinkie and Rose get into the car, headed toward Peacehaven. Rose wonders if Ida was telling the truth, if Pinkie doesn’t love her after all. It would be the hardest truth to face. She tells herself it doesn’t matter, because she loves him—that’s what’s important. She tells Pinkie that life isn’t so bad, but he disagrees. It’s prison, he says, and cancer and kids shrieking from windows. He takes the note Rose wrote to him about never betraying or leaving him and he asks her if she meant it. She says yes, knowing that in doing so she is laying down her life.

Pinkie mumbles the Latin phrase “dona nobis pacem,” and, hearing him, Rose responds that God will never give them peace. She wishes they could just wait a day or even put off attempting suicide until the cops came to take them away, but Pinkie says they have to do it now. He thinks about how, to him, Heaven is just a word but Hell is real. He looks at Rose and sees a mouth hungry for sexual union and breasts ready for a baby. She is a good woman but not good enough; he’s brought her down.

Rose feels as if Pinkie is a thousand miles away from her. He sees things she does not about damnation and eternal fire. She realizes that what they’re about to commit is the most serious sin of all. The sin of despair cannot be forgiven. Still, she will do it for him. If he is damned, so is she. She vows not to let him face that kind of darkness alone.

Pinkie stops at a pub and recognizes the waiter as Piker, a boy he used to torture back during his school days. Pinkie orders two brandies for himself and Rose and demands that Piker give them some music. He would like to celebrate. Piker turns on the radio and Pinkie and Rose stand awkwardly near a fireplace, sipping their drinks, trying to make conversation. Rose attempts a prayer, but she can’t pray; she’s in mortal sin.

Pinkie tells Rose to write a suicide note. It’s what’s always done, he says, and he would like them to do things the proper way. Then he leaves to find the bathroom. Walking down the passage to the men’s room, he thinks about his and Rose’s shared history. He hears the radio program pause to announce the time and the weather report. Storms are on the way. He watches through a window as the sea rolls over the breakers and thinks of how, soon he’ll only have himself to think about. He’ll be free. In the bathroom, he loads two bullets into the chamber of a gun he’s been keeping in his pocket. He can’t help it; he feels a twinge of pity as he readies the weapon.