Patchwork Beckett

Patchwork Beckett Ann Smock MADDY ROONEY'S NOT QUITE ROUND TRIP in All That Fall, from home to the train station in Boghill to meet her poor old blind husband Dan on his birthday and walk him home again, proceeds by fits and starts.1 It features in particular two "standstills," on one of which the radio play so to speak ends. All the halts along the to-and-fro itinerary could be described as moments of uncertainty: the characters can't seem to tell if they are going or coming. "What way am I facing?" Mr. Rooney asks his wife. Mrs. Rooney: What? Mr. Rooney: I have forgotten what way I am facing. Mrs. Rooney: You have turned aside and are bowed down over the ditch. (Beckett, All That Fall 36) No doubt there is but one direction to face in; we are all headed for the grave. Mr. Slocum: May I offer you a lift, Mrs. Rooney? Are you going in my direction? Mrs. Rooney: I am, Mr. Slocum, we all are. (17) But which way to tum in order to head that way? "On," no doubt. But maybe "back." "On back." Or "back on." I am thinking of Worstward Ho, where eventually we read, "Back is on." Back is on. Somehow on. From now back alone. No more from now now back and now back on. From now back alone. Back for back on. Back for somehow on.2 Stopping on the road home in order to tell Maddy his wife how it happened that his train had been 15 minutes late arriving in Boghill that afternoon (15 minutes on a 30 minute run—"It's unheard of!" Maddy insists), Mr. Rooney describes his frame of mind just before he realized, as he sat alone in his compartment , that the train had come to a standstill between stations. He'd been thinking about the two stations between which he is in the habit of commuting every weekday—home and office—and turning over in his mind how much he might add to his income by staying home in bed, "day and night, winter and 58 Spring 2000 Smock summer, with a change of pyjamas once a fortnight," instead of taking the train to his office five days a week at a cost of twelve pounds per month, not to mention the other expenses he incurs by getting out of bed and leaving home ("rent, stationery, various subscriptions, tramfares to and fro, light and heat, permits and licences, hairtrims and shaves, tips to escorts, upkeep of premises and appearances, and a thousand unspecifiable sundries..."). He'd concluded that the economic advantages of retiring from "business" were considerable, but then he'd remembered the horrors of home life ("the dusting, sweeping, airing, scrubbing, waxing, waning, washing, mangling, drying, mowing, clipping, raking, rolling, scuffling, shovelling, grinding, tearing, pounding, banging and slamming," not to mention the "happy little healthy little howling neighbours' brats"). And thus he got to thinking again of his quiet backstreet basement office "and what it means to be buried there alive, if only from ten to five, with convenient to the one hand a bottle of light pale ale and to the other a long icecold fillet of hake." "Nothing," he reports having said to himself, "not even fully certified death, can ever take the place of that." Thus his cogitations resulted in indecision. Which is preferable: home, or that other grave, the office? Which is worse: business, or that other unrest, retirement? "It was then I noticed we were at a standstill," he says (33-34). Maddy Rooney's own progress on the way from home to meet Dan at the station is similarly arrested several times, and each time it's as if everything had come to an indecisive halt between living and dying. For example, Mr. Slocum drives up behind Mrs. Rooney in his car, as she toils along the road on foot; he offers her a lift and switches off the motor in order to load her in. Once she is aboard, the car won't start. "All morning she went like a dream," Mr. Slocum says, "and now she is dead." [Pause...