The Green Room

We’d picked up the cottage for peanuts, as

It sat on the edge of a wood,

The air was damp and we used a lamp,

No power in that neighbourhood,

But the sun came filtering in through the leaves

On the pleasant summer days,

It was like we were living a hundred years

In the past, using former ways.

We carried our water in from a well

That sat just outside the door,

We had to lower a wooden pail

And it slopped all over the floor,

But Meredith laughed, and said it was fun,

She felt like a pioneer,

‘I’m getting to know how things were done

In the neck of the woods, round here.’

We fired the stove and the hearth with wood,

Gathered among the trees,

For branches fell, in the storms as well

When the wind was more than a breeze,

I chopped it up on a wooden block

And carted it all inside,

To see it stacked by the kitchen clock

Gave me a sense of pride.

Upstairs was a single bedroom with

An attic room beside,

The walls were covered with wallpaper

From a distant time and tide,

The bedroom was an ocean blue

And the attic was painted green,

I said to Meredith, ‘Shield your eyes,

It’s the brightest thing I’ve seen.’

The damp had got in the attic wall

And the paint had started to rot,

Up in one of the corners you

Could see a slight fungus spot,

But we didn’t need the room just then

So I said, ‘Just let it be.

I’ll find the time to attend to it

When the rest has set me free.’

But Meredith’s sister came to stay

So we had to use the room,

We turned it into a bedroom with

A flick of a whisking broom.

Rhiannon was a beauty, I’ll 

Admit that she took my breath,

So young, and with her life unsung

And yet she was close to death.

She’d been and slept in the Green Room

For a week, or maybe more,

When she said, ‘I fell, and I feel unwell,’

Then she coughed up blood on the floor.

So Meredith was distraught, and thought

She’d sleep at her sister’s side,

But early the following morning she

Then told me her sister died.

She stayed with her sister’s body there,

She said it was like a tomb,

And soon my Meredith coughed up blood,

She said ‘It’s an evil room!’

A doctor came with the ambulance

And looked at the flaking mould,

Then said, ‘I think it’s the paint, my dear,

I’ve heard of this stuff of old.’

He scraped it then, and he tested it

And he came back round to see,

‘You know that paint’s full of arsenic,

There’s a well known history.’

And life was never the same for us

When we sat in the cottage gloom,

I could always hear Rhiannon’s cough

Up in that attic room.

While Meredith put the blame on me

Packed up her things and left,

She said that I should have scraped it off,

Then left me, feeling bereft,

She’d lost her sister, and I lost her

So I sit alone in the gloom,

My heart has stopped like a ticking clock,

And the cottage, now, is a tomb.

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[Einstein Noodle]

oh man! kept looking and waiting for the humor .. alas! not to be so :( i think this is the first serious tragedy of yours i have read ...they are most always laced with a lighter side
i think ending with the "tomb" is strong .. works quite well says i! goes from metaphor to reality ...just like that ..
thank you for my very interesting history lesson for today .. Scheele's Green .. who would have thought!!! love and peace my friend .. all the best of the day to ya!
E.

[Tony Jordan]

If our guy had scraped it off then no doubt he would be toast too, so ...I guess Rihanna was like the beautiful canaries that were brought down the mines...nah...I don't believe that, I'm just being crass, David.
I enjoyed this very much mate.
Thanks for posting it.
:)