Brighton Rock (35 page)

‘Where’s that gun?’ Pinkie said again. He screamed with hate and fear, ‘My God, have I got to have a massacre?’

She said, ‘I threw it away.’

She could see his face indistinctly as it leant in over the little dashboard light. It was like a child’s, badgered, confused, betrayed: fake years slipped away—he was whisked back towards the unhappy playground. He said, ‘You little. . . ’ he didn’t finish—the deputation approached, he left her, diving into his pocket for something. ‘Come on, Dallow,’ he said, ‘you bloody squealer,’ and put his hand up. Then she couldn’t tell what happened: glass—somewhere—broke, he screamed and she saw his face—steam. He screamed and screamed, with his hands up to his eyes; he turned and ran; she saw a police baton at his feet and broken glass. He looked half his size, doubled up in appalling agony: it was as if the flames had literally got him and he shrank—shrank into a schoolboy flying in panic and pain, scrambling over a fence, running on.

‘Stop him,’ Dallow cried: it wasn’t any good: he was at the edge, he was over: they couldn’t even hear a splash. It was as if he’d been withdrawn suddenly by a hand out of any existence—past or present, whipped away into zero—nothing.

10

‘It shows,’ Ida Arnold said, ‘you only have to hold on.’ She emptied her glass of stout and laid it down on Henekey’s upturned barrel.

‘And Prewitt?’ Clarence asked.

‘How slow you are, you old ghost. I just made that up. I couldn’t chase over France for him, and the police—you know what police are—they always want evidence.’

‘They had Cubitt?’

‘Cubitt wouldn’t talk when he was sober. And you’d never get him drunk enough to talk to them. Why, this is slander what I’ve been telling you. Or it would be slander—if
he
were alive.’

‘I wonder you don’t feel bad about that, Ida.’

‘Somebody else would have been dead if we hadn’t turned up.’

‘It was her own choice.’

But Ida Arnold had an answer to everything. ‘She didn’t understand. She was only a kid. She thought he was in love with her.’

‘An’ what does she think now?’

‘Don’t ask me. I’ve done my best. I took her home. What a girl needs at a time like that is her mother and dad. Anyway she’s got me to thank she isn’t dead.’

‘How did you get the policeman to go with you?’

‘We told him they’d stolen the car. The poor man didn’t know what it was all about, but he acted quick when Pinkie pulled out the vitriol.’

‘And Phil Corkery?’

‘He’s talking of Hastings,’ she said, ‘next year, but I have a sort of feeling there won’t be any postcards for me after this.’

‘You’re a terrible woman, Ida,’ Clarence said. He sighed deeply and stared into his glass. ‘Have another?’

‘No thank you, Clarence. I got to be getting home.’

‘You’re a terrible woman,’ Clarence repeated; he was a little drunk, ‘but I got to give you credit. You act for the best.’

‘He’s not on my conscience anyway.’

‘As you say it was him or her.’

‘There wasn’t any choice,’ Ida Arnold said. She got up; she was like a figurehead of Victory. She nodded to Harry at the bar.

‘You’ve been away, Ida?’

‘Just a week or two.’

‘It doesn’t seem so long,’ Harry said.

‘Well, good night all.’

‘Good night. Good night.’

She took the tube to Russell Square and walked, carrying her suitcase: let herself in and looked in the hall for letters. There was only one—from Tom. She knew what that would be about, and her great warm heart softened as she thought: After all, when all’s said, Tom an’ I know what Love is. She opened the door on to the basement stairs and called, ‘Crowe. Old Crowe.’

‘You, Ida?’

‘Come up for a chat an’ we’ll have a turn with the Board.’

The curtains were drawn as she had left them—nobody had touched the china on the mantelpiece, but Warwick Deeping wasn’t in the bookshelf and
The Good Companions
was on its side. The char had been in—she could see that—borrowing. She got out a box of chocolate biscuits for Old Crowe; the lid had not been left properly on and they were a little soft and stale. Then carefully she lifted out the Board, cleared the table and laid it in the centre.
SUIKILLEYE
, she thought. I know what that means now. The Board had foreseen it all—Sui, its own word for the scream, the agony, the leap. She brooded gently with her fingers on the Board. When you came to think of it, the Board had saved Rose, and a multitude of popular sayings began to pass together into her mind. It was like when the points shift and the signal goes down and the red lamp changes to green and the great engine takes the accustomed rails. It’s a strange world, there’s more things in heaven and earth. . . 

Old Crowe came peering in. ‘What’s it to be, Ida?’

‘I want to ask advice,’ Ida said. ‘I want to ask whether maybe I ought to go back to Tom.’

11

Rose could just see the old head bent towards the grill. The priest had a whistle in his breath. He listened—patiently—whistling, while she painfully brought out her whole agony. She could hear the exasperated women creak their chairs outside waiting for confession. She said, ‘It’s
that
I repent. Not going with him.’ She was defiant and tearless in the stuffy box; the old priest had a cold and smelt of eucalyptus. He said gently and nasally, ‘Go on, my child.’

She said, ‘I wish I’d killed myself. I ought to ’ave killed myself.’ The old man began to say something, but she interrupted him. ‘I’m not asking for absolution. I don’t want absolution. I want to be like him—damned.’

The old man whistled as he drew in his breath. She felt certain he understood nothing. She repeated monotonously, ‘I wish I’d killed myself.’ She pressed her hands against her breasts in the passion of misery. She hadn’t come to confess, she had come to think; she couldn’t think at home where the stove hadn’t been lit and her father had got a mood and her mother—she could tell it in her sidelong questions—was wondering how much money Pinkie. . . She would have found the courage now to kill herself if she hadn’t been afraid that somewhere in that obscure countryside of death they might miss each other—mercy operating somehow for one and not for the other. She said with breaking voice, ‘That woman. She ought to be damned. Saying he wanted to get rid of me.
She
doesn’t know about love.’

‘Perhaps she was right,’ the old priest murmured.

‘And you don’t either,’ she said furiously, pressing her childish face against the grill.

The old man suddenly began to talk, whistling every now and
then
and blowing eucalyptus through the grill. He said, ‘There was a man, a Frenchman, you wouldn’t know about him, my child, who had the same idea as you. He was a good man, a holy man, and he lived in sin all through his life, because he couldn’t bear the idea that any soul could suffer damnation.’ She listened with astonishment. He said, ‘This man decided that if any soul was going to be damned, he would be damned too. He never took the sacraments, he never married his wife in church. I don’t know, my child, but some people think he was—well, a saint. I think he died in what we are told is mortal sin—I’m not sure: it was in the war: perhaps. . . ’ He sighed and whistled, bending his old head. He said, ‘You can’t conceive, my child, nor can I or anyone the. . . appalling. . . strangeness of the mercy of God.’

Outside the chairs creaked again and again—people impatient to get their own repentance, absolution, penance finished for the week. He said, ‘It was a case of greater love hath no man than this that he lay down his soul for his friend.’

He shivered and sneezed. ‘We must hope and pray,’ he said, ‘hope and pray. The Church does not demand that we believe any soul is cut off from mercy.’

She said with sad conviction, ‘He’s damned. He knew what he was about. He was a Catholic too.’

He said gently, ‘Corruptio optimi est pessima.’

‘Yes, father?’

‘I mean—a Catholic is more capable of evil than anyone. I think perhaps—because we believe in Him—we are more in touch with the devil than other people. But we must hope,’ he said mechanically, ‘hope and pray.’

‘I want to hope,’ she said, ‘but I don’t know how.’

‘If he loved you, surely,’ the old man said, ‘that shows there was some good. . . ’

‘Even love like that?’

‘Yes.’

She brooded on the idea in the little dark box. He said, ‘And come back soon—I can’t give you absolution now—but come back—tomorrow.’

She said weakly, ‘Yes, father. . . And if there’s a baby. . . ’

He said, ‘With your simplicity and his force. . . Make him a saint—to pray for his father.’

A sudden feeling of immense gratitude broke through the pain—it was as if she had been given the sight a long way off of life going on again. He said, ‘Pray for me, my child.’

She said, ‘Yes, oh yes.’

Outside she looked up at the name on the confessional box—it wasn’t any name she remembered. Priests come and go.

She went out into the street—the pain was still there, you couldn’t shake it off with a word; but the worst horror she thought was over—the horror of the complete circle—to be back at home, back at Snow’s—they’d take her back—just as if the Boy had never existed at all. He had existed and would always exist. She had a sudden conviction that she carried life, and she thought proudly: Let them get over that if they can; let them get over that. She turned out on to the front opposite the Palace Pier and began to walk firmly away from the direction of her home towards Frank’s. There was something to be salvaged from that house and room, something else they wouldn’t be able to get over—his voice speaking a message to her: if there was a child, speaking to the child. ‘If he loved you,’ the priest had said, ‘that shows. . . ’ She walked rapidly in the thin June sunlight towards the worst horror of all.

Brighton Rock

The classic film adaptation of
Brighton Rock
was released in 1947. Graham Greene and Terence Rattigan wrote the screenplay. The film was produced and directed by the Boulting Brothers. Richard Attenborough starred as the razor-wielding Pinkie in perhaps his most iconic onscreen role. Famously, The British Board of Film Censors requested that Greene soften the story’s memorably cruel ending. Despite this change,
Brighton Rock
is widely viewed as one of the best British
film noirs
.

A remake is scheduled for release in 2010, featuring Sam Riley and Helen Mirren. Director Rowan Joffe plans to shift the setting from the 1930s to 1960s to give it a more modern feel.

Certificate: PG
Running Time: 92 minutes

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Epub ISBN 9781407086835
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