This poem, a vignette of sorts, is loosely based on the latter years of exiled local writer, Gerald Edwards, the creator of that archetypal Guernsey character, Ebenezer, whose journal is the basis for the fictional Book of Ebenezer Le Page, one of the most highly acclaimed novels of the Twentieth Century.
THE LODGER
He could be short-tempered and cold.
He’d say, Too dear at seven quid,
and other times she would be told,
I’m leaving. But he never did.
At times he seemed to rule the house.
Lodger from Hell, she’d tell her spouse.
An old man, elderly, she’d say
a writer, something of that sort,
Is it a novel or a play?
My bloody masterpiece! He’d snort.
The manuscript on ruled foolscap,
some days he’d call a load of crap.
He was an inconsistent man:
one moment charmer, next a boor:
companionless, without a clan,
with old-school manners, but piss-poor.
He’d leave his light on half the night,
brew pots of tea and write and write.
He looked the educated type,
authoritarian and stern,
tweed jacket and a filthy pipe
he’d empty in the potted fern.
Perhaps he’d been a teacher once
and saw her as the classroom dunce.
But all of that was years ago.
He’s dead and scattered with his debts.
His book is in the shops, although
it doesn’t sell well, she regrets.
A book’s no substitute for life.
He’d have been better with a wife.
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