The End of the World is a Cul de Sac by Louise Kennedy

Author:Louise Kennedy
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781526623294
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2021-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Gibraltar

1983

Audrey McGuigan is in front of the wire fence that marks the end of their garden, where newly-planted lawn gives way to tufts of roseroot and marram grass. Behind her, Ben Bulben is under cloud, only the west side visible, curving into the sea. The tide is out, an acrid slime covering the seabed. A dog has left the carcass of a sewage-fattened mullet in the low dunes and the smell repulses her; she is seven months pregnant. Marty hasn’t figured out how to use his new camera, and Audrey has been stock-still for five minutes. He’s just noticed how huge she is, at least as big as when she was at full term with Rory, who is out of the picture, climbing over the Gibraltar Rocks to get away from his parents’ bickering. After a clutch of car sales, Marty goes to auctions. He has bought a scrap of waste ground, a terraced house on Harmony Hill, a derelict shop near the docks. He also bought the field that borders Gibraltar. Half an hour ago, he put a sign on one of the gates that reads KEEP OFF THESE LANDS. Where is he going with his lands, Audrey wanted to know, and him reared in Belubah bloody Terrace. Their Queen Anne-style house is a bespoke pine kitchen away from finished. Rockview Lodge, they’ll call it; there will be a row about that too.

1990

This one was taken by a photographer. The parish priest is between Marty and Audrey, delighted to pose with the man who gave him five per cent off a new Mondeo and threw in alloy wheels for nothing. Audrey’s mouth is smiling. Her left hand is buried in the cloud of Shona’s veil to stop it from blowing away. The Communion dress is cut from Audrey’s wedding gown. Shona would have preferred a dress from a shop, but her mother had been so keen to take scissors to the lace and tulle she hadn’t said so. Her palms are touching, as if in prayer, a white satin handbag swinging from her wrist that’s already bulging with cards and cash and Nanny Lynch’s rosary beads. The more you have the more you get, Marty thinks. The day of his own Communion his father poured him a whiskey in the scullery and went out to the pub to celebrate by himself. There’s a meal booked in the hotel, where he’ll have to buy drinks for everyone in the bar, because that’s what is expected when you own half the town and employ the other half. At least it’ll give him something to do while Audrey and the children are at the long table, flanked by the Lynches. Rory is in a brown blouson jacket, his right foot raised an inch off the ground, as if he’s about to bolt. Audrey would bolt too, given half a chance.

2001

Shona is wearing a one-shouldered purple dress, her long hair straightened, eyebrows thin and arched. She is smiling over at her mother while Marty takes the picture.

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