More Pricks Than Kicks by Beckett Samuel

Author:Beckett, Samuel [Beckett, Samuel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780802198372
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2007-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

Walking Out

ONE fateful fine Spring evening he paused, not so much in order to rest as to have the scene soak through him, out in the middle of the late Boss Croker's Gallops, where no horses were to be seen any more. Pretty Polly that great-hearted mare was buried in the vicinity. To stroll over this expanse in fine weather, these acres of bright green grass, was almost as good as to cross the race-course of Chantilly with one's face towards the Castle. Leaning now on his stick, between Leopardstown down the hill to the north and the heights of Two Rock and Three Rock to the south, Belacqua regretted the horses of the good old days, for they would have given to the landscape something that the legions of sheep and lambs could not give. These latter were springing into the world every minute, the grass was spangled with scarlet afterbirths, the larks were singing, the hedges were breaking, the sun was shining, the sky was Mary's cloak, the daisies were there, everything was in order. Only the cuckoo was wanting. It was one of those Spring evenings when it is a matter of some difficulty to keep God out of one's meditations.

Belacqua leaned all his spare weight on the stick and took in the scene, in a sightless passionate kind of way, and his Kerry Blue bitch sat on the emerald floor beside him. She was getting old now, she could not be bothered hunting any more. She could tree a cat, that was no bother, but beyond that she did not care to go. So she just remained seated, knowing perfectly well that there were no cats in Croker's Gallops, and did not care very much what happened. The bleating of the lambs excited her slightly.

My God, it occurred to Belacqua, I must be past my best when I find myself preferring this time of year to the late Autumn.

This vivid thought, quite irrefutable as he recognised at once, did not so distress him that he was unable to move on. Past the worst of his best, there was nothing so very terrible in that, on the contrary. Soon he might hope to be creeping about in a rock-garden with tears in his eyes. Indeed proof, if proof he needed, that he was rather elated than distressed, appears in his taking his weight off the stick and moving forward; for the effect of a real dereliction was always to cast him up high and dry and unable to stir. The bitch walked behind. She was hot and bored.

Slowly he raised his eyes till they were levelled at his destination. Tom Wood, it graced like a comb a low hill in the distance. There he had assignation, but only in the sense that an angler has with the fish in a river. He had been there so often that he knew all its ins and outs, yet he could not have given a name to its timber. Oak, he supposed vaguely, or elm, but even had he looked he would not have been any wiser.

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