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Throughout My Policeman, Marion Burgess and Patrick Hazlewood are in a battle for the attention of their shared love, the titular policeman, Tom Burgess. In the early bloom of each of their relationships with Tom, Marion and Patrick both seek to form sexually and emotionally intimate relationships with him. Beginning when she’s a teenager, Marion seeks to gain Tom’s attention but is continually thwarted, both by his seeming indifference to her and by the social conventions that prevent her from being forthright about her romantic interest in him. Similarly, Patrick must be discreet and patient in pursuing a relationship with Tom, both because of the societal disdain for homosexuality and because of Tom’s profession as a policeman, the police often acting as violent enforcers of that social disdain. Both Marion and Patrick make uneasy progress in their relationships with Tom throughout the novel, as Marion succeeds in becoming his wife and Patrick his lover. However, true intimacy seems out of reach for both characters, as Tom refuses to fully be with either partner. He does not commit emotionally to his relationship with Marion because he loves another, and he cannot fully be in Patrick’s life, as his fear of societal retribution is too great. By attempting to have both a socially acceptable heterosexual marriage and a secret gay lover, Tom alienates both partners. As a result, all three characters spend much of their lives pursuing thwarted connection and grappling with loneliness.
The structure of the novel emphasizes the ongoing struggle between Marion and Patrick and underscores the power and danger of each narrator telling their own story. The novel is told in alternating sections by Marion and Patrick, both relying on personal writing to say to themselves—and eventually to larger audiences—what they have felt forbidden to say aloud. Patrick’s narration is told through his journal entries, in which he details both his love for Tom and his fear of being outed. These entries are eventually used as evidence to imprison him. This consequence emphasizes how powerfully Patrick needs to give voice to his love for Tom and how dangerous it is for him to admit his feelings to himself even in the privacy of his own journal. Marion, whose letter-writing leads to Patrick’s imprisonment in 1958, turns to confessional writing in 1999, both to unburden herself of the secrets she’s kept for four decades and in the hopes of reuniting Tom and Patrick. The novel also spans two time periods: the late 1950s, when each couple’s courtship advances, and 1999, after Patrick comes back into Marion and Tom’s life after being estranged from them for 40 years. The events of the 1950s are often told twice, once from Marion’s perspective and once from Patrick’s. This repetition provides two views of the events and reflects how they continue to reverberate for all three characters even decades later.
The events of the late 1950s revolve around Marion and Patrick’s respective attempts to form sexually and emotionally intimate relationships with Tom. Both Marion and Patrick face the strictures of a hostile social order, which curtails their freedoms and complicates their romantic pursuits of Tom. Marion’s story begins with meeting Tom as a teenager, when she becomes solely focused on gaining his affections. She works hard to overcome his lack of interest in her, hampered by the societal restrictions on women that limit her ability to initiate physical intimacy. After they’re married and she learns of Tom’s relationship with Patrick, she sees it as the main impediment to intimacy with Tom. However, what truly stands between her and the marriage she desires is not Patrick but rather Tom’s inability to be the partner she wants. For Patrick, the events of this period revolve around his attempt to form a romantic bond with Tom in the context of a society that forbids gay relationships. To live openly as a gay man in England in the 1950s is to risk ostracization, violence, blackmail, and legal retribution. Tom, though more sexually interested in Patrick than Marion, is frightened of social backlash and insists on the protection of a cover marriage. Patrick, for his part, is forced to live in secrecy and to compromise the monogamous relationship he wants with Tom. Like Marion, he is hampered both by social restrictions and by Tom’s inner conflict.
Marion and Patrick’s desire for Tom’s attention exists in an uneasy equilibrium for a time, as each compromises their goal of having Tom’s full attention in favor of getting some of what they really want. However, Tom and Patrick’s trip to Venice brings the conflict between Marion and Patrick to a head. Patrick tries to get Tom to stay in Venice, to live out the dream of being together in a more gay-friendly society. But Tom rejects his vision as just a dream, dutybound to return to Marion and to England. At the same time, Marion is forced by Julia to face the fact that Tom’s attraction to men isn’t going to change. Feeling powerless and angling to have Tom for herself, she outs Patrick in a letter to his supervisor. Naïve or willfully ignorant of the dangers this act could pose for Patrick (and for her husband), she hopes to force Tom to seek comfort in his heterosexual marriage. Instead, her letter leads to Patrick’s arrest and Tom’s exposure. Both men leave their jobs, and Patrick is imprisoned. Rather than bringing Marion and Tom closer together, the letter throws Tom into a period of immense grief and isolation and leads to the destruction of both romantic relationships.
Following Patrick’s arrest, the plot falls into an unresolved state. As a result of her letter and the subsequent trial, Marion’s marriage disintegrates even further. Tom retreats from her, avoiding her presence and spending his free time out of the house, swimming or meeting strangers for sex. In her 1999 writings, she indicates that her life in the time between the trial and her bringing Patrick to the house has carried on in loneliness, with no connection to Patrick or Tom. Tom also abandons Patrick, refusing to visit him in prison and seeming to avoid all contact with him for 40 years. Patrick’s desire for Tom still persists, as evidenced by his request that Tom visit him in prison. He also risks his life to tell Bert, a powerful fellow prisoner, his tragic tale of loving a young policeman—illustrating that, after losing everything, his desire to be honest about his sexuality and his relationship with Tom is, in the end, more important to him than his safety.
The plot finally finds resolution in 1999, after Marion brings Patrick back into Tom’s life in order to care for Patrick and push Tom out of his sense of solitary stasis. Since life without Patrick has not given her the marriage she wants, she decides that the way forward is to reunite Patrick and Tom. Characteristically, Tom is often absent and avoids intimacy, or even casual contact, with both Marion and Patrick. Patrick’s ongoing desire for Tom is made evident by his only spoken words, asking Marion where Tom is. The doctor’s warning that Patrick’s health is deteriorating spurs Marion to push Tom to reconcile with Patrick while there is still time. She achieves her goal by providing Tom with her manuscript, which she describes as a confession. Tom and Patrick reconnect and Marion leaves to find her own life, outside of her marriage. Confessing her role in Patrick’s arrest releases her from the secret she’s carried for decades and allows the trio’s relationships to, at last, find some measure of resolution.
