A Dilapidated Dream

I stood on the street, and took a deep breath, as I looked at the building in front of me. It was old and sad and terribly silent. Boarded up, and left to rot, and rather strangely, painted sky blue. A last act, perhaps? To assuage guilt, to avoid penalty, to close a chapter. Who knows.

‘How do we get in? I said, to the local Estate Agent. Unsure of how to proceed. The front door no longer accessible, the key long mislaid.

‘The gate’ he said, pointing to the side of the house. I followed his gaze to a rusty wrought iron gate, partially sunken, at the top of an old footpath, a side door visible in the distance.

We half pulled, half dragged it open, and then paused from the sheer effort of it all. I dusted fragments of rust off my fingers and counted the windows high above my head. What a view they once had; a town square, a beautiful river, a delicate bridge. Planks of wood lay across the old frames now, broken nails at each end. A view obscured, a dream deferred.

The side door, heavy and annoyed by years of neglect, was not playing ball. It required a push, a heavy lean, and eventually, an aggressive shove before it crashed open. Wood splintered and groaned, plumes of dust flew into the air, and a sharp sound threatened to burst our eardrums, as mounds of rubble were disturbed for the first time in decades.

I stood in the doorway, the house shrouded in darkness, disconnected from the world, creaking from every angle, as if waking from a long sleep. I wondered how long it had been since someone had stood in the same spot.

‘I’m sorry’ I whispered. To who, I don’t know. To history, maybe. To people. To what had happened. It felt like the right thing to do.

The dust cleared and a staircase appeared in front of my eyes, and I realised I was standing in a hallway. The centre of the house. What a sight. The stairs, although not steep, were imposing. A handful of steps led to a small landing, and then continued to twist upwards, one row veering off to the left and another to the right. Shallow wooden steps, that cast long shadows, and led to mysterious places.

‘You can’t go up there’ the Estate Agent said. Interrupting my reverie. ‘It’s too dangerous. The ceilings are falling in.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘What about down there?’ Pointing to another hallway, in darkness. ‘No’ he said. ‘Sorry’. We carried on. Quietly picking our way through the rubble, phones screens and a torch lighting the way, tiny streaks of daylight peeking through the boarded-up windows, like minuscule flares.

‘This is the pub’ he said, as we shuffled through a narrow door. ‘I used to come here all the time’. I looked around, at the little bar, with what seemed like the highest counter in the world, and imagined people sitting there, sipping a pint, exchanging news and views.

‘It was a good spot’ his said. His voice suddenly different, a little further away, transported to another time, another place.

‘And through here’ he said, clearing his throat, ‘is the shop’. I laughed to myself as I walked through the sagging archway. A shop and a pub! But of course. I had been in several of them over the years, the Mayo man in my life delighting at the look on my face during one particular visit, as someone asked for a ‘tin of paint, a bag of nails, and stick a pint on out the back for me, will you Mick?’.

Broken glass crunched under my feet, as I moved around, my eyes adjusting to the darkness. An old counter veering to the left, and another one to the right. They liked symmetry in this house. A cold breeze swirled in a gaping hole above my head, the ceiling long gone, leaving an abyss of history in its wake.

I thought about the people who had left this place, as I looked around. The shop abandoned, but not empty. Radiators on the walls, dust-covered objects on the shelves, picture frames hanging akimbo on rusty nails, a key in the lock on the inside of the door.

A place, and people, that had meant so many things, to so many people in this little town. And where were they now?

Did they know, when they left, that they would never be back?

What would they say, if I asked them about this beautiful old house, perched on the corner of the square, with blacked-out windows and boarded up doors?

Would they tell me a story, about people, about heartbreak, about beginnings and endings, and about how sometimes in order to move forwards, you have to move on?

‘We’ll never know, I suppose.’ the Estate Agent said, reading my mind. ‘But sure, it’s time for a new story now anyway’.

‘Yes, it is’ I said, smiling. As I watched him wrestle with the door, it was refusing to shut, after all this time, afraid to let us go.

‘I’ll be back soon’ I whispered, as I scuffed through the grass, and squeezed through the gate, the first act in a new chapter ready to begin.