A cheer went up from the park across the road, and Meg was brought back to herself and to Esme. The familiar sound of bat on ball, frequent polite clapping and the occasional excitement of a wicket reminded her it was Saturday morning, that she was in the heat of an Adelaide summer and nowhere near the damp and chilly climate of these words and their champions. She felt stiff, dishevelled. She got up and looked out towards the players. It was like any other Saturday, and yet it wasn’t.
Another cheer went up, but Meg turned away from the window and walked over to the bookshelf. It contained all twelve volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary. They were on a low shelf, so they would be easy to reach, though when she was small Meg could barely lift them. Her parents had been collecting them for as long as she could remember, the last only arriving a week earlier.
Meg pulled V to Z from its position at the end of the shelf and opened to the first page. She could smell its newness, feel the spine resist as she opened it. Published 1928.
Only months before, it did not exist. Only months before, Esme did.
Meg went to the other end of the shelf and traced her finger over the gold lettering of Volume I, A and B. The spine was creased from opening, the edge at the top damaged from her childish hands levering it out of its place. This time, Meg was careful as she took it from the shelf. The weight of it was always a surprise. She took it to her mother’s armchair and rested it in her lap. Then she opened to the title page.
A new English Dictionary
on Historical Principles
Edited by James A. H. Murray
Volume 1. A and B
Oxford:
At the Clarendon Press
1888
Forty years earlier. Esme would have been six years old.
Meg picked up the slip for beat and read the quotation.
‘Beat until the sugar is well combined and the mixture pales.’
She turned the pages of the Dictionary until she found the word. Beat had fifty-nine different senses across ten columns. Violence characterised so many of them. She ran her finger down the columns until she came to a definition that suited the slip. Four quotations, about beating eggs. The quotation on her slip wasn’t there.
Meg placed A and B on the floor beside the trunk. She opened the shoebox and riffled through it.
LIE-CHILD
‘To keep a lie-child condemns her and it. I’ll fetch a wet-nurse.’
Mrs Mead, midwife, 1907
Esme’s handwriting was already familiar. Meg retrieved Volume VI of the Dictionary and found the corresponding page. Lie-child was missing completely, but Meg understood what it meant. She returned to Volume I and turned to bastard.
Begotten and born out of wedlock.
Illegitimate, unrecognised, unauthorised.
Not genuine; counterfeit, spurious; debased, adulterated, corrupt.
Meg slammed the volume shut. She rose from the floor, but her legs were shaking. She felt fragile, suddenly unfamiliar to herself. She collapsed into the armchair and began to sob. Bastard had two columns, yet what it meant for her had not been captured by a single quotation.
Meg missed her mum, missed all her words and gestures, which she knew would have made sense of the mess that covered the floor of the sitting room. She buried her face in the fabric of the chair and smelled her mum’s hair, the familiar scent of Pears Soap, which she’d always used to wash it. And which Meg still used. Deeper sobs. Was that what it meant to be a daughter? To have hair that smelled of your mother’s? To use the same soap? Or was it a shared passion, a shared frustration? Meg had never wanted to kneel in the dirt and plant bulbs like her mum; she longed to be considered – not with kindness, but with curiosity, with regard for her thoughts, with respect for her words.
Was that what the mess on the floor was? Evidence of a curious mind? Fragments of frustration? An effort to understand and explain? Were Meg’s longings akin to Esme’s, and was that what it meant to be a daughter?
By the time her dad knocked at the door, Meg had stopped sobbing. Something was trying to emerge from her grief – to complicate it or simplify it, she did not know.
‘Meg, love?’ His manner was as gentle as it had been the night before, and he came into the room like a bird watcher afraid of startling a wren.
Meg said nothing; her mind tripped repeatedly over something uncomfortable.
‘Would you like some breakfast?’ he asked.
‘I’d like some paper, Dad. If you don’t mind.’
‘Writing paper?’
‘Yes, mum’s bond paper, the pale-blue paper in her writing desk.’ She searched her dad’s face for any sign of resistance, but there was none.
Adelaide, November 12th, 1928
As I write all this down, I hesitate. To call Esme my mother feels like a betrayal of Mum, but to deny her that title? Still, I hesitate. All night I have been contemplating the meaning of words, most of which I’ve never used or even heard of. I’ve accepted their importance in the contexts in which they were uttered, and for the first time I’ve questioned the authority of the many volumes that fill one shelf of the bookcase opposite where I now sit.
Mother would be in there. Of course it would, though I have never had any cause to look it up. Until this moment, I would have thought that any English speaker, no matter their education, would know the meaning of that word, know how to use it. Know who to apply it to. But now, I hesitate. Meaning
