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Sport 26: Autumn 2001
Part 1
Part 1
His grandfather's house is separated from the beach by a dirt road which leads towards the southern headland, then turns and runs up to the head of the valley. It is surrounded by cabbage trees, an overgrowing garden, fences.
A long-established conflict is playing out between land and sea. People have long gathered to support one or the other. Supporters of the sea point to its relentless pounding, wearing away at the rock, carving it into tortured shapes over the millennia. The land's supporters point out its persistence, that it is still there, despite the obvious erosion problems hereabouts. A certain flexibility, a fighting spirit, in fact an almost liquid nature, mountains thrusting upwards on an unimaginable wave of molten rock. The two factions stand on the beach and cheer their favourites. They set up close to the high-tide mark, and though the old man has tried to evict them, they claim a legal right to remain.
His grandfather said once, ‘Queen's Chain indeed. Chaos and stability. Whatever happened to the middle way, between the two?’
Mending fences, dipping sheep, a stream flowing close by the woolshed to the ocean, where it fanned out in a brown, nutrient-rich stain, thrown back at the sand by the waves. His grandfather's arms brown in the sun. His grandmother, inside, or in the garden, pale under a broad hat.
Childhood holidays. The old man would say to him, ‘What do you want to sit around and read for?’
He would follow reluctantly and be forced to try and shear sheep, failing to control the animals while the shearers laughed. Later, he would secretly find his way out of the house, towards the beach, where page 136 the crowds stood about close to the water.
He once said, ‘My grandfather's shed burnt down.’
A man nodded and said, ‘Arsons have been going on around here for about thirty years. Maybe longer. It's a local tradition.’
He said, ‘Why?’
There was a woman standing with him and the man. They were silent for a minute.
She said, ‘Maybe it is not surprising that buildings on the land do not survive for very long. They are people's attempt to claim it, conquer it.’
He searched for some adult implication in her words.
The man said, ‘It is the sea which conquers the land.’
The woman said, ‘Is not.’
The man said, ‘Is too.’
There was a long, awkward pause. The woman said, ‘People invest in concrete and steel industries, hoping to cash in on the building boom in inner cities, the slums of the Third World. Thinking that land is something that you can just build on. But things don't last. There are earthquakes, for example. No one really knows when the next one will occur.’
He looked up at her, admiring her forcefulness.
The man said, ‘Tidal waves.’
The woman sighed. She said, ‘Landslides.’
The man said, ‘The Titanic.’
The woman said, ‘Mount Vesuvius.’
His grandfather barely tolerated this argument for many years. It was around this time, however, that there was a change: perhaps having seen him with them, his grandfather invited the beach people in, gave them drinks and entertained them with his stories. It was a sudden easing of relations, and made him suspicious. His grandmother smiled and clenched her teeth in the corner, sipping sherry. His parents drove somewhere up the coast, to spend the night alone. The old man would point to him, with his arm around one of the supporters of land or sea, and discuss his upbringing in the city.
page 137In his grandparents' bathroom, dust, red-brown stains on the enamel of the bath and basin. He later had a theory that his grandmother also hated the buildup of mess, but long hollow days drained her energy to mention it, or clean it up.
His grandfather has been alone, remaining stubbornly in his isolated place, for six years, since the death of his wife. People from neighbouring farms or the nearby town come and bring him food, and give the place an occasional cleaning.
The management of the farm has been reluctantly taken over by neighbours, whose house is some way up the valley. The old man can hardly walk now. He will totter to his ancient truck and drive out to where they round up his stock, hoarsely stating his orders, which the boys on four-wheelers follow.
They occasionally move the trees, the hills and fenceposts, mixing up the land so that it is unrecognisable. There are trees like pylons, hills like apartment blocks, a steady, noisy traffic of commuters moving about the rough grass and fencewire. His grandfather feels pain in his legs, looks about his property, recognising nothing, and turns and leaves them to their job.
People are captured in phrases, gestures. His grandfather in a squint as he said to him, ‘Coming?’ His grandmother, in a sudden smile, always directed at a tangent to his grandfather's radius, glancing off him, and falling on a suddenly halted grandchild, stunned by the rareness of that expression as much as by the presence of her husband, his skin hanging loosely where muscle used to be.
Much later, as a young adult, he again visits his grandfather's house.
Since his childhood here, over the course of geological time, many small changes have added up, to give the appearance of a catastrophic event. He recognises the house, the cabbage trees…the hills have shifted, erosion and uplift locked in battle, trees fallen and risen again, fences drawing and redrawing their lines across the land but never satisfied, trying a new partition, leaving the marks of former incarnations here and there.
page 138The house is still standing. His grandfather moves about in it, treading dirt from the garden into the carpet. Outside, the land and sea shine, as though with some inner light.
On the beach, there is widespread disagreement about whether the land is best thought of as male and the sea female, or vice versa. They are writing down new mythologies of this place. He wonders what has become of the old ones.