Good fences make good neighbours

In Robert Frost’s excellent, vivid poem Mending Wall there is a striking line: good fences make good neighbours. The poem is about two farmers, neighbours, working in tandem to rebuild sections of the damaged wall that defines their boundaries.

In the process of repairing it, Frost comments on how (in all of us) there’s something that doesn’t quite like walls; something that needs to tear the edifice down, make holes in it. The poet also muses on the fact that when one builds a wall one is, for sure, walling something out.

But one is also in the process walling something in. And this leads to an ambivalence: Is a wall a good thing? Or is it an impediment? If one were to ask my friend Brian the question, he’d, without a second thought, opt for a wall any day.

His neighbour is a man named Joe and Joe’s son, Tony, would be the reason for Brian’s decision to build such a structure. Tony is what used to be loosely referred to as ‘a spoiled brat’. That is, his parents have showered on him his every need. It’s not as if he’s an only child. He has an older brother with a strong sense of responsibility.

Tony, on the other hand, wouldn’t recognise responsibility if it reared up and struck him in the face. He’s fallen foul of the law several times. Now in his late twenties — and a father himself — he shows no sign of maturing into the steady man his mother has predicted he’d become as soon as fatherhood came knocking.

Tony’s father Joe blames his wife for bringing Tony to this state, through sheer overindulgence. The wife, when Joe is not within hearing, would have it the other way. He’s the one who presented Tony with a car on his 17th birthday, she says. Anyhow, Brian, who lives across the wall, has been friends with the family for years now. He’s watched Tony grow and Tony’s watched him grow older and, perhaps, a trifle more infirm.

Money for nothing

One morning he arrives at Brian’s door and says, ‘Hey, can you drive me to the pet store?’ Brian replies in the negative citing the fact that he’s imbibed a little too much to risk driving legally. Get a taxi, suggests Brian. ‘I would,’ Tony tells him, ‘only I don’t have any money.’

So Brian, drawn into the conversation, asks him why he wants to go the pet store. ‘To buy a pet of course,’ says Tony. He has his eye on a puppy. A Labrador. Brian asks how much the pup costs. ‘Two hundred dollars,’ says Tony. And Brian, with a sense of triumph, cuts in, ‘Mate, if you’ve got A$200 [Dh530] for a pup, you must have some loose change for the taxi.’

But what Brian thinks is a smart move of mental chess comes back at him pretty quickly when Tony replies, ‘But I don’t have the money. That’s why I’m here. I want you to lend me A$200.’ Brian puts a foot down, metaphorically. No way, he tells Tony. ‘I can’t lend you any money without asking your parents first.’ And in this way he hands back the advantage.

‘Call my father,’ Tony suggests. Brian does. Tony’s father, placed at a crossroads of indecision, hums and haws on the line.

‘Your son is here, standing right in front of me,’ says Brian. Brian expects that the father will say, ‘Put Tony on. I’ll talk to him.’ But no, what Joe says is, ‘Hang on a minute, I’ll ask the Mrs.’

The woman who he’s claimed is the weakest link in shaping his son’s personality is now chief decision maker. It’s not hard to guess what she said. Yes. ‘Lend him the money, Brian.’

When the entire family left for another state last year Brian must have felt like he’d finally patched the holes in his fence and made himself secure once again. As Frost said, ‘Good fences …’