I'm Still Standing

by Colleen Coleman

  The moment passes and it is time for the hearse to resume its slow crawl. And we all move on with it, because after all, what other choice do we have?

  It’s been a week since Colm’s funeral, and today we will open the doors again for the first time, just for a few hours, to get our heads around what has happened and ease ourselves back in gently after the shock. Tomorrow night is going to be a biggie, as a new up-and-coming British singer is booked in. People have been going crazy for her since Danny booked her nearly a month ago, and we’re sold out. We can’t let them all down and we can’t stay closed forever. And I’m confident it’s what Colm would have wanted too: to keep Rosie’s alive and kicking.

  It’s just after midday and Christy sits up at the bar with a battered red folder in front of him. ‘I’ll need a double before I even start this.’

  Uh oh. This does not bode well.

  I pour a large whiskey and pull up a chair beside him. Danny stays behind the counter and makes us a pot of tea. Christy slugs a good throatful of whiskey, then winces and shakes his head at the teapot. ‘You’re not going to like this. I suggest you sort yourselves out with something a lot stronger than tea bags for what’s coming.’

  ‘Just hit us with it; whatever it is, we can take it,’ I tell him. Danny winks at me and pours our tea.

  ‘On second thoughts…’ He turns on his heel and grabs two chocolate bars. ‘Here you go, just in case.’

  ‘Right. Don’t say I never warned you.’ Christy opens the folder and flips through to a piece of paper covered in columns and small numbers. And lots of red pen marks, murderous-looking circles and slashes all over the sheet.

  He separates it from the rest and holds it in front of him as though he is a town crier. ‘Rosie Munroe inherited this pub from her mother and her mother before her. A long line of successful businesswomen. And in their day it was tough going. Rosie never had her own children, so she left the pub to Colm as he was her only living relative, her nephew. I’ve been Colm’s best friend all my life – he was as close as any brother to me. And well, I’ve seen this place have its good days and its bad days. Sadly, Colm let bad days become bad months and bad years. During one particularly bad year, he found himself in a situation where he had to borrow a lot of money just to keep the show on the road. It seemed sensible at the time.’ He cocks an eyebrow. ‘You follow me?’

  We both nod.

  ‘Well, sensible may be the wrong word. I knew he’d borrowed money from all sorts of lowlife, but I thought I knew the extent of it and that he was keeping on top of it.’

  He lowers the paper and peers over it, shaking his head. ‘How far from the truth that has turned out to be.’

  I’m afraid of what I’m going to hear next.

  ‘As you know, on top of all his loans, Colm also mortgaged and remortgaged to the hilt. Which brings us to the major problem concerning the two of you…’

  I lean in to Danny for physical support; by the look on Christy’s face, this is serious.

  He flicks through to another piece of paper; this one is heavier, embossed with a silver and green logo.

  ‘As Colm owes the bank, and has failed to meet payments over a sustained period of time – and now that he is deceased will never be in a position to repay his debts – the bank have authorised the repossession of this building.’ He drains the whiskey.

  ‘But we are the leaseholders,’ I tell him. ‘And we’re turning a profit. They need to speak to us and sort out what kind of repayment programme we can draw up. It’s fine, Christy, we can sort it.’

  Christy shakes his head and leans forward on his elbows.

  ‘I’m sorry, Evelyn, you only have the lease for the licence.’ He pats his hand down on the counter. ‘For the bar business, not the premises. The bank own the building and I’m afraid they are turfing you out. As of tomorrow, Rosie Munroe’s is closed, under repossession order, and will be registered for public auction as a going concern.’

  It’s Danny who’s now shaking his head. ‘No offence, Christy, but that can’t be right. Surely the bank want to sort something out…’

  Christy takes off his glasses and slumps back in his chair.

  ‘Sure they’ve been trying to sort things out with Colm for years. He was on his last chance when you guys stepped in to take over.’ He wipes his hand down his chin. ‘I know you two have worked your bollocks off. And you know, I was just starting to believe that you’d make it. That you were going to save this old girl from extinction.’

  Danny has the bank’s letter in his hand now, his finger trailing down the page. ‘“… licence is suspended… notice to stop trading with immediate effect… any attempt to counter these instructions will result in prosecution… trespassing… the premises must be vacant for insurance purposes”.’ He looks up. ‘But what about all the bands we’ve booked in? What about the stock? The staff? What are they supposed do? Just show up tomorrow and find a sign on the door saying that we’re shut? For good. Just like that?’ He sounds as outraged and gutted as I feel. Are we really hearing this properly? We have already pre-sold hundreds of tickets online for upcoming gigs!

  Christy holds up his hands in defeat.

  ‘What about all the money I’ve ploughed into this place?’ I ask. I know the answer. Nothing. I chose to invest in the building, and the building belongs to the bank, so I’ve got no rights whatsoever.

  God, I feel stupid. I thought it was much more clear-cut. It never crossed my mind that the business and the building were two separate entities. It’s like when you order an Indian and you just get a bowl of curry, and you realise, at the most inopportune time, that rice and veg and bread and all the other stuff you assumed would come with it doesn’t. It’s a perfect analogy, exactly the same thing, if your Indian meal cost you thousands and thousands, every last cent of your savings…

  I can hear Mrs O’Driscoll’s voice in my ear. To assume makes an ass out of u and me. So that’s where I went wrong. Assuming that I could trust the documentation, assuming that I was given the whole story, assuming that I could make a go of this place and actually succeed.

  I sling two shots of whiskey into each of three glasses. Why not? We’ve lost. We’ve lost the whole shebang.

  ‘It’s the end of the road, I’m afraid,’ says Christy, closing the folder.

  ‘But there has to be some way!’ says Danny. ‘What about the auction? Can anyone bid in that?’

  ‘Oh yes, it’s a public auction, so there’s nothing to stop you bidding like everybody else. Open house.’

  Okay. Maybe there is some way then. An expensive, high-risk, unlikely and unpredictable way, but a way nonetheless. I’ve watched Bargain Hunt enough times to know how to raise my paddle with a haughty nod.

  ‘And how much do you think they’ll want for it?’

  Christy curls the end of his beard around his finger as he makes the calculations. ‘There’ll be a reserve on it so that the bank are guaranteed to recoup what they are owed.’ He refers back to the paper with the red scribbles. ‘According to this – and I’m no expert – a quarter of a million might cover it. Absolute minimum, though. Remember, the bank is not there to chase the best price or make a profit; they just want to reclaim the debt and strike it off their books. Some clever fox with a healthy savings account could snap up a real bargain here.’

  ‘Two hundred and fifty thousand euros.’ I blow out my cheeks. ‘I know it’s a great price for a place like this, but it’s still a small fortune. I have nowhere near that.’ I look to Danny.

  He tilts his head, considering. ‘I think I could raise about twenty thousand if I sell off all the recording equipment Rory had; it’s in storage.’

  And that prompts me. ‘If I could sell the cottage, I’d have a lump sum that might give us a fighting chance. But not the whole amount, that’s for sure. And we don’t have a buyer yet.’ I haven’t had a sniff of interest, even at the reduced-to-sell price tag. And until I sell it, I’m tied to my previous life. It could be months, years
even, before a buyer comes along – and with nobody in it, damp creeping in, no regular maintenance, it’s depreciating all the time. Who knows if we’ll ever sell it at all, never mind at a decent price.

  Christy shakes his head. ‘I don’t want to dash your dreams, kids, but that’s only a drop in the ocean. These banks don’t wait around; they want the cash fast and they don’t care where they get it from.’ He looks around the bar, waves his arms. ‘Place like this is a developer’s dream. They’ll be licking their lips when they see it on the market. Location, period features, iconic, blah blah blah. Mark my words, the next time you see it, it will be boarded up and gutted and sliced up into office space, filled with water coolers and photocopiers and soul-crushed sales staff before you can blink.’

  I think about Martin, the homeless man I met when I’d just arrived here in Dublin, living – barely surviving – on the developer’s steps.

  I glance over at Danny. He’s deep in thought too. If this was a church or a theatre, we’d get a preservation fund, we’d be able to prove it was a site of cultural heritage. But we’ve just got some bar-stool anecdotes to prove its place in history. And that won’t stand. Every pub in Dublin would declare that they inspired the greats if it was easy as that. But it’s not just about the history, it’s about the present, too. We’ve got new bands banging down the door to play on our stage, to our crowd. It’s not fair. It’s worse than that; it feels unjust.

  Danny wraps his arm around my shoulder. ‘We’ll find another place. If we can do it here, we can do it again.’

  It’s as if he’s read my mind. It is about the future. When I think of my five-year plan now, it’s all about Rosie Munroe’s. The music, the staff, the direction, the advertising. It’s about me and Danny building it into our shared dream as partners. Making that dream a reality. A little space carved out away from the sirens and the fumes; somewhere people can go just to escape the drudgery, the pressures of life, the loneliness for a short while.

  I just know that if we could raise enough to buy this place, we’d bring it even further. We could make it happen. Look what we have done already. We’ve quadrupled the profits, and that’s considering all our setting-up expenses, bar stock and initial promotion costs. We’ve just got our name on the map, we’re just starting to go places, make a solid reputation for ourselves, reach the dizzying heights we’ve worked so hard for.

  Don’t say it’s all over, that it’s all been for nothing, that our dream is done. Don’t say Rosie Munroe’s has died along with Colm.

  Christy rings the bell, a sad, drawn look in his eyes. ‘Last orders, ladies and gents, looks like it’s time to go.’

  Looks like it’s our time to say goodbye.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  We’ve cancelled everything. Made our devastating announcements over social media, tried to explain that it was unforeseen, unexpected, that whatever gut-wrenching disappointment the punters are feeling, believe us, we are feeling it too. Yesterday a huge red ‘For Public Auction’ sign was erected out front. Every window is boarded up with chipboard so it’s pretty clear it is a vacated property, but there’s still lots of stuff to steal if somebody was that way inclined; everything from the memorabilia to the fittings, from the floorboards to the stained-glass windows.

  It depresses me so much to see it this way. Only a couple of weeks ago we were riding the crest of a wave, we had everything to dream about; now it’s just a boarded-up building that amounts to nothing more than the numbers in red on a banker’s ledger. Cancelling stock orders, cancelling gigs we’d booked in, breaking the news to the staff that the doors would never reopen, handing over the keys to the auctioneer and switching off the lights for the last time was heartbreaking.

  Danny took his guitar back out to the corner of the street and started busking again, but facing the tomb of Rosie Munroe’s hurt him too much, so he moved into the centre of town, where there’s still plenty of life. He sings on the Ha’penny Bridge now.

  He’s been quiet lately. Quieter than I’ve known him to be since we’ve been together.

  This morning, in the very early hours, he’s restless in his sleep, tossing and turning and groaning. Then all of a sudden, he shoots up with a jolt.

  ‘Are you okay, Danny?’ I ask, turning on the bedside lamp and putting my hand on his shoulder.

  He looks at me, clutches his chest and then his cheeks.

  ‘I dreamt it happened to me,’ he says, his eyes big and unblinking. ‘The heart attack.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I ask, gathering the bedclothes. Whatever this is, it has scared the crap out of Danny, and that’s scared the crap out of me.

  ‘Rory died of a congenital heart defect.’

  Ah. I always wondered how Rory had died, but couldn’t bring myself to ask. I didn’t want to ask questions that may deepen Danny’s grief even more.

  ‘We never knew he had it until the day his heart just stopped. He was my twin, so the doctors told me it was fairly reasonable to assume that if it was hereditary, I might have it too.’

  ‘You?’ I can barely get my words out. No. No. This can’t be right. I shake my head and turn towards him. ‘But they’d be able to tell you, right? They wouldn’t keep you in the dark about that if you were at risk. There’s got to be some kind of test, so you don’t have to go through your life not knowing. Not knowing would be hell, torture.’

  He shakes his head. ‘They’ve offered me tests; they can tell me easily if I’m at risk, but I don’t want to know.’

  ‘I don’t get this, Danny. Help me understand why you wouldn’t want to know something as important, as literally life-changing as this?’

  ‘Because that’s exactly it. If they tell me I’ve got it, that changes my life. Ruins my life. Imagine they told me that I only had a year to live, what would that do to my present? Totally fuck it up. I’d just spend the year worrying and waiting. I don’t want that to happen to me. That’s not living. That’s hell. That’s torture.’

  I sit up fully in bed now and turn on the light.

  ‘But what if they told you that you were fine, that you have the heart of an ox? Then you’d really be able to live fully, without fear…’

  He shrugs. ‘It’s a risk I’m willing to take.’

  ‘So you’re never going to find out? How do you plan ahead? How do you think about what you’ll be doing in five years’ time?’

  He shakes his head resolutely. ‘I never look ahead. I just live for the moment.’

  ‘What if you were with somebody who actually loved you and cared about you? What about the future then, and all the plans you’d have together? What if you had kids?’

  ‘Kids? In a perfect world, yes, kids would be amazing, but that’s not going to happen. I’m never going to have any.’ He bites down on his bottom lip and stares straight ahead at the bedroom wall. ‘My parents didn’t exactly do a great job, and our tickers don’t seem to be the strongest, so I figure it’s probably best for the human race that I don’t put another generation through all that.’

  I need to know the answer to this next question even if it has the potential to make my whole world implode. Again.

  ‘Where do you see yourself in five years’ time, Danny?’

  He shrugs. ‘No idea.’

  And I have no idea what else to say. We sit in silence, trying our best not to look at each other now. Danny pulls on a T-shirt and shorts and heads into the bathroom.

  Once he is in the shower, I slink out of the front door. I should want to kick myself for asking the five-year question. But the problem doesn’t lie in the question. The problem lies with the answer. And the answers I’ve had have been the kiss of death for both the men I thought I could build a forever with.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  When I get back to Tara’s flat, I lie on the single bed and try to work out what I should do next. The hard truth is that it’s over for me here. I can’t stay on like this. Circling around what will never be, anxiously rubbing at my fading hopes
like a rabbit’s foot.

  Instead of starting over, I’ve opened old wounds, made things even worse than they were when I arrived here in the first place. I loved my father and then had to bury him, and now I’ve had to do the same with Colm. I loved the cottage and let myself believe that it would be the place where new memories would be born, new dreams realised, and then I had to empty it out and lock it up just like I’ve had to do all over again with Rosie’s. Worst of all, I believed I could still trust my heart and have a second shot at love and laughter and happy ever after.

  Realising I don’t have a future with Danny hurts much more than anything else, because it has come as a complete shock. And there is something he could do about it, if only he could pluck up the courage to take the next step in finding out what the truth is.

  And of course, it hurts because I’m in love with him. I must be to feel like this.

  I’m finished now. I’m heartbroken and exhausted and everything I’ve worked for since getting here feels so cold, so distant. The same words just go round and round in my head.

  What a terrible shame. What a terrible waste. What a terrible end to a so-called brand-new start. I tried. I failed. I think it’s time to cut my losses, pack my bags and make my way home to Ballybeg.

  The next day I arrange to meet Danny in town for lunch. I think it’s for the best. I tried in this city, I threw everything at it, but I guess Colm was right: you just can’t beat the system. If anything, I’m worse off than when I first got here, as I managed to sink all my money into Rosie Munroe’s and have been left penniless and heartbroken and flat on my arse. When I arrived in Dublin, I couldn’t understand how someone like Martin could end up on the street, but now I know exactly how that can happen. Back payments piling up, an interest-rate hike, a few unseen expenses and the next thing you know, you’re signing the rights over to the bank and handing in your keys. And if it wasn’t for my family, I could easily find myself alone and without a home to go to.