Brighton Rock: Part VII, Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis

Pinkie decides to pay Prewitt a visit. He supposes that the old lawyer will be Ida’s next target. Prewitt lives on a street that parallels the railway. It’s dusty and loud. There’s a scowling woman with a bitter face staring out at Pinkie from a basement window. He found out recently that the woman is Prewitt’s wife. Pinkie demands to be seen, even though a servant girl has told him that Prewitt is indisposed and won’t come out. He waits in Prewitt’s office where empty file boxes rumble every time a train goes by. Music drifts through the open window and Pinkie asks the servant girl to shut it. She leaves without doing so. Eventually, Prewitt appears, smiling broadly through pain. He has indigestion.

Pinkie asks if the music coming from the neighbor’s apartment ever ceases. Prewitt bangs on the wall and his neighbor turns the radio off angrily. Pinkie asks Prewitt if anyone has come around asking questions about Spicer. Prewitt looks even sicker. He tells Pinkie he’s lucky; he will probably hang for his crimes. Prewitt, on the other hand, will rot. Pinkie is uncomfortable, seeing the old lawyer look so vulnerable. Prewitt tells Pinkie’s he’s ruined. When he took on Pinkie as a client, he lost his only other one, a bank, and now Pinkie will soon be ruined, too, run out of business by Colleoni, who has his own, much more high-powered attorney.

Pinkie sees that Prewitt is drunk. The old man begins to unburden himself. Pinkie listens against his will. Prewitt bemoans the fact that he married beneath him. He’d felt passion for his wife at one time. That was why he married her. Now, he calls her “the mole” and “that hag” and claims that she’s ruined him. He quotes Dr. Faustus, saying, “Why, this is Hell, nor are we out of it.” He points to a picture of a boy’s public school class to show Pinkie just how far he has fallen. To think, Prewitt says, that his only client is a gangster and that he is married to a hideous woman. He’d had much greater ambitions than this.

Pinkie wishes Prewitt would stop talking. He doesn’t like having to consider what life is like for any man but himself. He offers Prewitt some money to take a holiday, maybe to Boulogne. Prewitt confesses that sometimes he considers exposing himself in a park. Mostly, though, he just watches the young typists walk by. He agrees to take Pinkie’s money and make himself scarce. Pinkie leaves, meeting Prewitt’s wife on the stairs. She seems to be looking out at him from her cave. Once outside, Pinkie glances up at Prewitt who is standing at his window, staring out blankly. There are no typists to see on a Sunday.