ing lessons; a somewhat older Ada given to nagging—“Did you put on your
jaegers, Henry?” (97); “Don’t wet your good boots” (99)—and then to warn-
ing Henry that “You will be quite alone with your voice, there will be no
other voice in the world but yours” (102). And ¤nally what is evidently the
present moment in which Henry tells Ada, “I was trying to be with my fa-
ther,” and she says sardonically, “No dif¤culty about that.” To which Henry
responds, “I mean I was trying to get him to be with me. [Pause.] You seem
a little cruder than usual today, Ada” (102).
But so ®uid are the shifts from one time frame to another that there is no
use in trying to establish a meaningful temporal sequence. When Henry
says, in what seems to be the present, “let us get up and go,” Ada responds,
“Go? Where? And Addie? She would be very distressed if she came and found
you had gone without her” (98). But when, a few minutes later, Henry asks
Ada, “What age is [Addie] now?” it is Ada who demurs, “I have lost count of
time” (101). When Henry counters, “Twelve? Thirteen? [Pause.] Fourteen?”
the audience is even more confused, for Henry and Ada seem to be talking
of a time in the distant past. Moreover, the one speci¤c time signal given
throws us off even further:
ADA: [Twenty years earlier, imploring.] Don’t! Don’t!
HENRY: [Ditto, urgent.] Darling!
ADA: [Ditto, more feebly.] Don’t!
HENRY: [Ditto, exultantly]. Darling! (100)If this prototypical “young love” scene took place twenty years before the
present of the play, how could Addie now be twelve or thirteen? Beckett
every where underscores the foolishness of such questions. And the radio
medium makes it possible to shift ground at a moment’s notice and to col-
lapse time. Past and present are often indistinguishable, even as sound dis-
tinctions are rigidly maintained: sea-sound versus “hooves” in the ¤rst se-
quence, “drip” in the second, and ¤nally the dashing together of stones in
the third. When Ada insists that “there’s nothing wrong with it [the sound
of the sea], it’s a lovely peaceful gentle soothing sound,” Henry goes wild:
Thuds, I want thuds! Like this! [He fumbles in the shingle, catches up
two big stones and starts dashing them together.] Stone! [Clash.] Stone!
[Clash. ‘Stone!’ and clash ampli¤ed, cut off. Pause. He throws one stone
away. Sound of its fall.] That’s life. [He throws the other stone away.
Sound of its fall.] Not this... [Pause.]... sucking!” (100, ellipses Beck-
ett’s)112 Chapter 6