He sat in his favourite corner,
Each day, just taking his pills,
The old man, Frederick Horner
Counting his cash and paying his bills,
They watched and noted his every move,
Took note of each sign of life,
He’d outlived both of his daughters,
And even his scheming wife.

He never revealed how old he was
And nobody knew the truth,
He said he was old as Methusaleh,
Remembered the Biblical Ruth,
He still had the very first dollar he’d earned
Had framed it, and locked in his drawer,
But now he had multi-billions,
And each day added more.

‘You’d think he would give us some,’ they said,
His sons, Nathaniel and George,
For they had to work for their daily bread,
And Nathaniel slaved at a forge.
‘He can’t live forever,’ George opined
‘And then it will pass to us,’
The money was always on George’s mind,
As he drove the local bus.

‘We’re not getting younger,’ Nathaniel said,
‘I’m forty and you’re forty-two,
We could have made good if he’d shown some trust,
But look at our Becky and Sue.
They both died young, of neglect they said,
And mother, she died from the shakes,
But he goes on, he’s just about dead,
It must be those pills he takes.’

They’d watched him taking his yellow pills,
He never said what they did,
The blue, kept under the windowsill,
The orange, the old man hid.
‘It must be them that keep him alive,
The orange, the yellow and blue,
What if we take the pills away?’
‘You can, but it’s up to you.’

‘Maybe we ought to try them first,
They could give us both long life.’
‘They didn’t do much for her,’ said George,
‘The old man’s second wife.’
Nathaniel nodded and looked quite grim
He remembered the yellow pills,
Spilling out of the woman’s hand
When she fell down, deadly ill.

They’d never been close to their father when
Their mother suddenly died,
Whenever there was an argument
They’d taken their mother’s side,
The old man sat in his corner and
Would mutter of stains and blood,
Would wait for a glimmer of light to shine
But doubted they understood.

‘We’ll try the blue, one pill apiece
One night when he’s in his bed,’
And so they did, they swallowed them down
In seconds they fell down dead.
The old man grinned in his final breath,
‘Too curious, those two,
They should have asked who their father was
For it wasn’t me… I knew!’

David Lewis Paget