I said that there only were ninety steps
To the drop at the edge of the cliff,
As long as she didn’t take ninety one,
She wouldn’t end up as a stiff.
She’d only been blind since the accident
When the car got away from me,
Went rolling, gambolling on down the hill
And ending up flat by a tree.

And Cindy went straight through the windscreen
She shattered the glass she went through,
She screamed out to me that she couldn’t see,
She cried, ‘I’m just looking for you!’
But I was sat pinned by the steering wheel
I couldn’t get out if I tried,
I said, ‘Don’t distress, they’ll fix you up yet,’
One look at her eyes said I lied.

We came up to move in to ‘Ocean View’,
The house overlooking the sea,
I thought that the air would be good for us,
And the view would be okay for me.
I paced out the steps to the edge of the cliff
And reported to Cindy as such,
As long as she kept to her boundary
She wouldn’t fall over - (Not much!)

It isn’t much fun when your partner is blind
When everything has to be done,
She took it for granted that I wouldn’t mind
So sat on the porch in the sun.
I washed and I cooked and I tidied the house,
While she took her lessons in braille,
My life wasn’t funny, but she had the money,
I felt I was living in jail.

I walked with her right to the edge of the cliff
But always stopped seven steps short,
I said, ‘When you venture away from the house,
Remember the cliff is due North.’
I tried to impress it was safer to stay
Within ninety steps from the edge,
What I hadn’t told, as my blood had run cold
It was Eighty Eight steps to the ledge.

They’d say it was ******, I’d say it was fate
If she finally fell from the cliff,
I would say, ‘what the odds, it was up to the gods,’
And ‘life, it was full of ‘what if?’
My plans came to nothing, she drowned in the bath
But I still felt as guilty as sin,
I knew I’d had ****** there deep in my heart
And that evil is doing me in!

David Lewis Paget