Chapter Commentary Part 2 of Brighton Rock - Study Guide by Graham Greene

too, is Pinkie's. He sees Ida at a nearby table: '... How she hung on. Like a ferret he'd seen once on the Down, among the chalky holes, fastened to a hare's throat. All the same this hare escaped. He had no cause to fear her now.' (224). He takes Rose alone for a ride into the country. With his customary forethought to an alibi, he stops at the shooting gallery, asks the time and shoots deliberately off-centre: 'He thought, "Something had agitated him, the witness said." (225). "Dona nobis pacem", he murmurs as they drive out of Brighton. His plan is to convince her to enter a suicide pact with him.

Meanwhile, Ida lies to Dallow: that Prewitt was arrested on the quay before he embarked for Boulogne. Dallow suddenly realizes what Pinkie had in mind when he took Rose for a ride into the country and follows him. They arrive to find Rose alone in the car with a gun that Pinkie has given her with all the necessary instructions. She hears them call for Pinkie and is frightened but her fright does not compel her to pull the trigger: 'It was as if somewhere in the darkness the will which governed her hand relaxed, and all the hideous forces of self-preservation came flooding back.' (242). Instead, she throws the gun away. Dallow tells Pinkie that Prewitt has been caught. He asks Rose for the gun but she has thrown it away. He fishes in his pocket for the bottle of vitriol that he always carries. Whether he intended to use it on himself or on Dallow is not entirely clear but the contents end up splashing over his face. Stumbling in agony he walks over the edge of the cliff:

'"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 It was as if he'd been withdrawn suddenly by a hand out of existence - past or present, whipped away into zero - nothing.' (243)

Ida is avenged. The stickler for righteousness is satisfied. The board was right: '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' (245). Rose is not satisfied. She wished that she had killed herself. She goes to confession and the priest consoles her,

' "You cannot conceive, my child, nor can I or anyone the... appalling... strangeness of the mercy of God... We must hope and pray... ".

'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 else. 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." (246).

This formula does not satisfy her, "I want to hope... but I don't know how". It is not until she asks him what she should do if she is pregnant by him that she sees a way forward, a light that gives her some direction:

'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.' (247)

The thought of Pinkie alive in his child gives her hope, and she remembers the record that he gave her on their wedding night. The priest had said, "If he loved you, surely, that shows there was some good... " (246). She walks to his house to fetch the record, a message from him, 'something loving', a message that could be played to his child, proof that, even now that he is dead, he is not gone: 'She walked rapidly in the thin June sunlight towards the worst horror all:

"God damn you, you little bitch, why can't you go home for ever and let me be?"