The Pines

The Pines is the bungalow in Peacehaven to which Marion Burgess and Tom Burgess move after Tom’s retirement, and where they take in Patrick Hazlewood after his hospital stay. Its orderly quiet offers Tom the smaller, supposedly safer life he seeks, but Patrick’s arrival makes the house a charged domestic space: Marion has prepared it for him, while Tom’s prompt departure leaves the two of them together in an unfamiliar home.

Setting and Household

Marion initially resists moving from Brighton to Peacehaven. She associates her old city with busy cafés, abundant shops, and the bright, sometimes menacing pier; Peacehaven, by contrast, has repetitive streets and a modest local routine. The bungalow is a single-storey, two-bedroom home within easy reach of a bus stop and the Co-op, with a long lawn, a whirligig washing line, and three outbuildings: a shed, garage, and greenhouse. The estate agent’s description of it as a Swiss chalet does not persuade Marion that it is anything grander than a bungalow.

The surrounding streets are quiet enough that, as Marion observes, few people are out before half past nine in the morning or after half past nine at night, apart from teenagers smoking outside the pizza shop. For Tom, who wants a quieter and supposedly safer place to retire, this lack of bustle is an attraction; Marion suspects he is also tired of reminders of his former police beats and work. The house’s calm is therefore not neutral: it answers Tom’s wish to leave his old busyness behind, even as Marion remains conscious of what she has given up.

The sea is the bungalow’s saving grace, though its view is only a glimpse from the side-bedroom window. Marion gives that room to Patrick so he can see the water. The gesture reverses their previous circumstances: Patrick had enjoyed a daily sea view from his Regency-finished flat on Chichester Terrace, while Marion and Tom’s former terraced house on Islingword Street afforded them only reflections in their neighbours’ windows. Marion remembers Patrick’s view in detail—the Volk’s railway, the Duke’s Mound gardens, the breakwater, and the sea—and gives him a portion of the outlook she and Tom had never possessed themselves.

Patrick’s Arrival

Patrick reaches The Pines from hospital a week before Marion recounts the scene. Tom lifts him from the car and into his chair, then wheels him along the front path. The bungalow’s exterior is presented through the apprehension Marion imagines in Patrick: brown pebble-dash, an exceptionally smooth plastic double-glazed door, a neat conifer hedge, and evenly laid pinkish-grey concrete slabs. Even the name The Pines strikes her as inappropriate and unimaginative. She supposes that the house’s regularity, which can comfort her through its predictability, may instead have filled Patrick with fear.

Inside, the beige-papered hallway carries the smell of bleach Marion has used to prepare for his stay, with the scent of Walter, the family’s collie-cross, beneath it. Patrick notices the framed wedding photograph: Tom wears the suit from Cobley’s, paid for by Patrick, while Marion wears a stiff veil. In the living room, Marion and Tom sit on a new brown velvet suite bought with Tom’s retirement money; the central heating ticks, and Walter pants at Tom’s feet. These specific domestic details place Patrick inside the couple’s established household, while the wedding photograph and the suit’s history also make his prior connection to them visible.

A House of Care and Unease

Tom tells Marion that she will see Patrick settled, then leaves, saying he has something to see to. Patrick winces at Tom’s decision to go and continues staring at the net curtains as Tom crosses the hallway, takes his coat and keys, and opens the front door. Walter follows Tom out. The departure is heard in small household sounds—the footsteps, the rustle of the coat, the jangle of keys, and the door’s suction—before the bungalow falls quiet. When Marion looks back, Patrick’s hands lie limp on his bony knees and are shaking.

The Pines thus holds two different kinds of refuge in tension. Tom has chosen its quiet as an escape from the reminders of his former working life, while Marion makes a room available to Patrick and prepares the house for his care. Yet the first scene of Patrick living there is marked not by settled companionship but by Tom’s absence and Patrick’s visible distress. The bungalow’s regularity, which Marion has learned to accept, frames the uncertainty of whether being in Tom’s home is what Patrick had hoped for.