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Summary
Part IV: HMP Wormwood Scrubs, February 1959
In prison, Patrick has come under the protection of Bert, the most powerful prisoner, who agrees to hide a notebook so that Patrick can keep a journal. Bert likes Patrick because he enjoys listening to educated men speak. Bert has heard about Patrick’s case and considers him wrongfully charged, defending him against being called “queer” by other prisoners.
Patrick remembers the night of his arrest. He had been asleep and imagined the knocking on his door must be Tom arriving. When he answered the door and saw policeman, he looked for Tom. Instead, Slater, the lead officer, arrested him for acts of gross indecency with a man named Laurence Cedric Coleman. Patrick realized as the police led him from the apartment that they would certainly find his journal, which he had left out on his desk. At the station, Slater showed him a picture of Coleman, whom Patrick recognized as the young man from the Argyle. Relieved that his arrest did not involve Tom, he made a false confession of having had sex with Coleman in order to spare Tom from the investigation.
Burkitt, a prison warden, comes to Patrick’s cell to take him to the “trick cyclist,” Dr. Russell, the prison psychiatrist. Russell’s office is an oasis, with a carpet, a fireplace, and a print of Matisse’s La Danse, the first work of art Patrick has seen in months. Wanting to spend as much time as he can in there, Patrick tells Dr. Russell that he wants to be “cured,” and they arrange weekly meetings. Patrick tries not to think of Tom but cannot help remembering the magic of their time together in Venice, riding speed boats and kissing in a church pew. By week 13 of his imprisonment, Patrick has become used to the routine. He works in the library with Mowatt, a young thief to whom Patrick loans his boots before a family visit. Patrick describes his childhood to Dr. Russell, expecting the doctor to blame his homosexuality on his attachment to his mother, but instead, Russell questions whether he truly wants to change his proclivities, and they end the sessions.
Marion writes to Patrick, requesting a visit. Patrick remembers her testifying at his trial that he was good with her students and not the kind of person to commit indecent acts. However, the prosecutor had confronted her with excerpts from Patrick’s journal and announced to the court that he and Tom had a sexual relationship. Patrick’s mother also writes, offering to let him stay with her after prison, with freedom to live as he pleases. When Marion visits, Patrick tells her that he is gay and that, although he did not have sex with Coleman, he had wanted to. Marion tells him that Tom has left the police force. He asks her to have Tom visit him, and she says that he will not come. After dinner, when Patrick usually entertains Bert with lectures on Shakespeare or history, he instead tells the tragedy of Tom, an intelligent, beautiful policeman who loves art and is loved by an older man who has been sent to prison but will always love him. Enraged by Patrick’s public admission that he is gay, Bert and his friends brutally beat Patrick.
Analysis
In Part IV of the novel, the text moves back and forth between descriptions of Patrick’s life in prison, of his arrest and trial, and of his time in Venice with Tom, setting in contrast the themes of freedom and restraint. In the time and place of the novel, gay sex is not only subject to social disapproval but is also punishable by law. While convention restricts the gay characters’ choices throughout the novel, Patrick’s time in prison—where he loses not only his home and livelihood but also his physical freedom—is the ultimate expression of the limitations imposed on him by a homophobic society. In contrast, Patrick and Tom’s time in Venice offers the greatest experience of freedom described in any section of the novel. In Venice, they are at liberty to express their affection openly, as they have escaped the oppressive mores of English life. They are also free to enjoy their relationship without the complicating presence of Marion. Although Patrick tries to convince Tom to move to Venice permanently, Tom insists they must return to England, illustrating that freedom is elusive and that Tom’s own internal sense of duty—to convention and to Marion—prevent him from embracing freedom completely. This section of the novel shows the stark contrast between the freedom Patrick dreams of and the harsh restrictions he lives under.
The small things Patrick focuses on in prison are examples of his tenacious hope. Throughout the novel, Patrick finds ways to hope when others despair, such as after Michael’s death. However, this habit is particularly hard to keep up at Wormwood Scrubs, where the prisoners cry out their collective grief each night. Patrick uses fantasies of small, ordinary objects, such as sharp razors and fingerless gloves, as touchstones to focus his mind on hope. Though he hopes for more sunlight, he notes in his journal that perhaps it is better that the outside light is never actually a clear beam, suggesting that the opportunity to hope for that small glimpse of beauty is more valuable than seeing it and taking it for granted. Patrick takes the most comfort in the word JOY carved on his cell’s desk, perhaps because it implies that someone else has shared his feeling of longing.
Personal writing is an important structural motif in the novel, giving Patrick and Marion their own narrative voices and serving as containers for their secrets. However, the use of Patrick’s journal as evidence against him in court illustrates the imperfect secrecy of private writing, which can always be discovered by others. Yet Patrick refuses to destroy his journals in order to make his experiences and feelings more real by giving them physical form, and they serve as a record of a relationship that cannot be legitimized legally or celebrated publicly. His desire to record his time with Tom compels him to override the caution that has previously kept him safe. This same urge leads him to tell his story to Bert, despite Bert’s warnings to stop. In the darkness of prison, after losing everything he tried to protect, it’s as though Patrick is tired of living in fear of being outed, as though he almost welcomes the physical violence that he has spent his life trying to avoid. In the end, he seeks out the thing he has feared the most, and in so doing, he rejects secrecy in order to stand fully revealed.
