The Great Undoing by Sharlene Allsopp

Author:Sharlene Allsopp
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ultimo Press
Published: 2023-11-17T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

* OED.

BEFORE NOW

[The Library Basement, South Kensington]

‘Do you know the difference between a spider web and a cobweb?’ I called out.

Silence. David must be out again.

I’d hardly left the old leather couch in the corner of the basement. It was shoved up against a wall with the only external light source: a tiny unopenable frosted window, well above head height. The first day I just lay on the leather, allowing the dust to cover me, watching the motes fall and rise and sparkle. I catalogued every cobweb, telling day from night by how visible they were.

My dad once gave me a walking tutorial on the beauty and function of spider webs. He told me that the webs were made of spider silk, as strong as steel, and almost as strong as bulletproof Kevlar in its strength to density ratio. A spider’s web is a working space, functional and active. A cobweb is an abandoned space, no longer used by its creator.

After accepting that I was alone, I flicked the lids off some archive boxes next to the couch and pulled out the top items. I whistled. These relics should not be here. Early editions of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) fascicles. Volume Five: F and G (nineteen-ten) and Volume Nine: SI—ST and SU—TH (nineteen-nineteen). I had used digital versions of these records many times, but had never laid eyes on their physical form. The other box held more modern hardcover editions. These archives were an inter-agency requisition. They required very specific protocols. I wondered if someone was mid-task when they were interrupted by the Undoing. Even still, they should not have been working with them in the basement.

Surrounded by abandoned spider silk, I imagined the OED workers in the Scriptorium pinning down concepts and definitions, while my William fought in fields and tunnels only a channel away.

I grabbed a newer edition, and my attention was caught by the definition of gossamer:

A fine filmy substance, consisting of cobwebs, spun by small spiders.

Applied to something light and flimsy as gossamer.

Of things, both material and immaterial: Light and flimsy as gossamer. Of persons: Frivolous, volatile.*

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