The Birthing House
The Birthing House
CHRISTOPHER RANSOM
Hachette Digital
www.littlebrown.co.uk
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
HOLLY
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
HOLLY
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
HOLLY
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
HOLLY
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
THREAD
The Birthing House
CHRISTOPHER RANSOM
Hachette Digital
www.littlebrown.co.uk
Published by Hachette Digital 2008
Copyright © 2008 Christopher Ransom
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All characters and events in this publication, other than those
clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance
to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without
the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated
in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published
and without a similar condition including this condition being
imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
eISBN : 978 0 7481 1137 4
This ebook produced by Jouve, FRANCE
Hachette Digital
An imprint of
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DY
An Hachette Livre UK Company
This tale, concerning mothers and wives
and the men who drive them to darkness,
is for the two strongest women I know . . .
Sandra Ransom
Who told me every day that I could
&
Pia Gandt
Who was there every day while I did
Acknowledgments
If any first-time novelist and his first-born ever received a warmer welcome to the delivery room, this author is unaware of them. To my agent and friend Scott Miller, and the entire team at Trident Media Group, your faith changed my life. To my publisher, David Shelley, you are a gentleman whose passion continues to astonish. Thank you for introducing me to the UK, and for your interest in the house. Nikola, Thalia, Nathalie, the two Emmas, Richard, Simon and everyone else at Sphere - you are all multi-talented saints and I owe you many pints.
To the citizens of the real Black Earth, please forgive my geographical liberties and warped perceptions. I know this ain’t your town, but the name was too appropriate to resist.
Death borders upon our birth, and our cradle
stands in the grave.
Joseph Hall, English bishop and satirist
1
Conrad Harrison found the last home he would ever know by driving the wrong way out of Chicago with a ghost in his car. When he crossed the Wisconsin line he was lost, too tired to care, and what traveled with him remained invisible and unknown. The wide green medians and fields of plowed fertile soil were relaxing. The road was black and smooth, free of those brain-jarring seams found on concrete highways. The spring thunder and rain moved over him from the side, pummeling the rented gray Dodge in bursts as brief and intense as a car wash. He could have gone on this way until he reached Canada, but an hour or two later there was some traffic and the sign for the Perkins in Janesville, so he exited.
He might have been tired and lost, but he was suddenly hungry, ravenous. Filled with the kind of animal appetite that shuts out all else and goes to work like it needs to prove something. He ordered the country fried steak with three over easy, and when the girl came to take the plate away he said, You know what? Let’s do it again.
In between dinners, he picked up the paper the last guest had left in the booth. He liked to read the classifieds, to see what scraps people were offering, what hope they sought. He fell into the local real estate listings. The photo was black and white, all grainy and pixelated newsprint.
140 yr old Victorian in Black Earth. 4 bdr, 2 bath on 1 acre. 3500 sq. feet. Front parlor, library, orig. woodwork, maple floors, fireplace. Cornish stone foundation. Det 2-car garage. Historic turn-of-the-century birthing house restored to mint. Perfect for family! $225,000. Seller motivated. Call Roddy @ 608-574-8911.
Now lightheaded from all the hash browns and gravy, he swallowed the last of his third cup of coffee and carried his meal ticket to the front counter. He paid with cash and left the girl a twenty for no real reason other than he felt, for the first time in his life, burdened by money. He juggled the page he’d torn from the Wisconsin State Journal and powered up his mobile. There were no messages, or maybe they had not come through the regional carrier’s towers yet. Or maybe Jo was too busy to call.
The man who answered was polite. Sure, he could show the house as early as nine o’clock tomorrow morning. And did he know how to get to Black Earth?
Conrad said he was pretty sure he’d remember the directions, all the while thinking, What a name for a town. Don’t worry, Dad. I’m not far behind.
So maybe he knew there was a ghost traveling with him after all.
2
From the front it appeared modest, a simple vanilla bean Victorian on a street of pleasant others. But later, when he would find himself walking the long slope of backyard alone at night, Conrad Harrison would come to see that its humble if charming façade masked ingenious depths and a height that seemed to grow at night, like Jack’s beanstalk. The needle-helmeted dormers, covered front porch, chocolate pillars and squat front door brought to mind a fairy-tale house made for trolls or elves, not city people.
It was not love at first sight, but she made his heart beat faster.
Conrad tried to mask his excitement, if only because that was what you were supposed to do when considering a major purchase. He tried for a moment to imagine Jo’s reaction if she were standing here beside him. It looked like the kind of house she was always talking about. Something old, something to redecorate when she was ready to settle down. But she wasn’t here beside him now and the realization that he didn’t much care what she thought gave him a deviant thrill. The house was like another woman in that way. Looking was just looking, and there was no harm in looking unless looking turned to touching. Or buying.
‘Got kids?’ Roderick ‘call me Roddy’ Tabor said, smiling
like a man in a milk commercial. Instead of a dairy moustache, Roddy had a badass seventies cop ’stache and wooly sideburns, sans irony. The realtor was tall, very slim and balding. The brown suit and wide, brown tie were priceless. Conrad liked the realtor the minute he’d spotted him behind the desk at the crummy, wood-paneled real estate office down on Decatur Street. Roddy had grown up in Chicago, and they’d talked about city life vs country life for all of the ten or fifteen minutes it took to walk from ‘downtown’ Black Earth up the broken sidewalk hill to 818 Heritage Street. ‘Perfect place to raise some kids. Property taxes are steep, but the schools here are top-notch. ’
Conrad cleared his throat. ‘No. No kids. Just the two dogs. Both rescues from a shelter in Los Angeles. But they’re like our children.’ Conrad thought about mentioning the other pets he liked to keep from time to time, the animals that weren’t really pets at all, but didn’t. You never knew how people were going to react.
‘Sure. Young couple. What’s the hurry, right?’ Roddy turned the key. ‘Oh, door’s unlocked. Pretty common ’round here.’
Conrad stepped past the realtor and laid his eyes on the first of several living rooms. Actually, he knew they weren’t all living rooms. In these Victorians it was parlor-this and sitting room-that. Whatever you called them, they amounted to a lot of space to spread out, play cards, eat, watch TV and entertain friends. They would need new friends.
‘I don’t go for the song and dance myself,’ Roddy said, dropping the keys on the ceramic tile and oak mantle. ‘Figure adults know what they like when they see it. Holler if you have any questions.’
‘Will do.’
Roddy ambled into the kitchen, helped himself to a glass of water, and stepped out back for a smoke.
Conrad found himself in the dining room, paced off the long maple floorboards, ran his fingers over the pinstriped wallpaper. Not a crack in the plaster walls or a splintering window sill in sight. The doorframes were straight. In the kitchen, the original wooden shelves and pantry drawers were nicked black in many places, aged smooth and full of character. The trim was a clean, buttery shade of toffee. The lines of the house were immaculate. The house felt solid.
But confusing.
Conrad started in the front parlor, then exited through the French doors that opened into the main foyer, making a U-turn back into the dining room and living room. From there he back-tracked and took a left into the family room and deeper into the kitchen. Once inside the kitchen, he forgot where the living room was, even though it was just on the other side of the wall. He went up the rear stairs from the kitchen, over one landing, through the library, and down the front stairs (which, despite the beauty of the black maple banister, seemed somehow formal and forbidding, though he couldn’t say why), winding through the main floor clueless as to what he had already seen and what was new.
‘You’ll get used to it,’ Roddy said, startling him. ‘Ever seen a house with servants’ stairs?’
‘No, not really.’ Conrad followed Roddy through the family room.
Roddy pointed to the faded hinge patterns on the doorframe at the base of the stairs and mouth of the kitchen. ‘See that?’
‘There was a door.’
‘Yep. And another one here.’ Roddy tapped the doorframe at the kitchen’s front entrance. ‘This way, you have two doors here, the help stays in the kitchen, out of sight from the proper company while you’re warming your feet by the fire. When dinner has been served and the good doctor is sipping his brandy, the maidens duck up the servants’ stairs here -’
Before Conrad could pursue the doctor reference, Roddy dashed up the servants’ stairs. Conrad followed at a less eager pace. When he hit the landing, Roddy made a sweeping gesture into the smallest bedroom.
‘Goodnight, you princes of Maine, you kings of New England,’ Roddy said. ‘And voilà. Servants are out of sight for the night. Let the party continue.’
‘Cider House Rules. Nice.’
‘That’s right,’ Roddy beamed. ‘You’re a movie guy.’
‘Not really.’ Conrad had mentioned Los Angeles and the screenwriting thing, as if that still mattered to him or ever had. ‘I was in sales. Did some consulting from home. We had friends in the business. The writing was just something to do.’
‘Oh? You cash in your chips?’
‘Ha, yeah, no.’ He’d never admit as much in Los Angeles, but out here, standing next to this stranger, Conrad decided to skip the embellishment for a change. ‘A guy I knew used to hire me for cheap rewrites, but I never sold any material. Nothing original. I was laid off from a software firm. Been working in a bookstore until my wife gets another promotion. I don’t really know what I’m doing, actually.’
Was Conrad imagining it, or did Roddy’s smile slacken a bit on that one? Maybe not too smart, mentioning the layoff - probably just raised a red flag on the financing.
‘Uh-huh, and what does your wife do?’
Conrad hesitated. ‘You know, Roddy, I don’t know what she does any more. I mean, I know she works for a company that sells pharmaceuticals, or consults with pharmaceutical companies. Or medical supplies. I think she’s something between a sales manager and a project manager. She travels a lot, that I do know.’
‘Sounds promising.’ The realtor seemed sorry he’d asked.
The bedroom was perhaps eight feet by six, with two small windows. Small enough for a child’s twin bed and a trunk full of clothes, no more. It seemed cruel.
Conrad nodded. ‘Where’s the master?’
They continued through the library and around the black maple banister in a sort of zigzagging shuffle that led into a T-shaped hall branching to three bedrooms. The master was just a regular bedroom, not much larger than the other two spare rooms, but three times the size of Tiny Tim’s room in the back.
‘This is the master,’ Conrad said, failing to conceal his disappointment.
‘Old houses, my friend,’ Roddy said. ‘Back then people didn’t use their bedroom for a whole lot. Not like now where you got your flat screen, your Jacuzzi, your orbital whattya call it, one of them gerbil wheels.’
‘Not very LA,’ Conrad offered.
‘Bingo.’
‘Besides,’ Conrad said, taking over the pitch. ‘We have a library. What do we need a TV for?’
‘There you go. I’ll give you some time up here, then we should grab some lunch before the saloon closes.’
‘No problem. I’ll be down in a few.’
‘We’re gonna feed you some fine Wisconsin cuisine, Mr Harrison.’ Roddy clomped down the front stairs.
Conrad poked his nose into the first of the remaining two bedrooms. Unremarkable, but a perfect size for Jo’s office, with a small window overlooking the rolling backyard.
He turned to the bedroom nearest the master. The knob wiggled loosely but he had to knee the wooden door from the frame to pop it free. Before it could swing all the way in, a short girl-woman with white hair scurried out, bumping his shoulder as she slipped by. Before he could get a bead on her, she swooped around the banister and trotted down the front stairs.
‘Whoa, hey.’ Conrad tasted a wash of adrenaline like a nine-volt battery pressed to his tongue.
‘Sorry ’bout that,’ she said in a flat, nasal tone, her face lowered even as she hit the foyer and exited through the front door.
White jeans or painter’s pants. A blue pocket tee over a pudgy midriff. Small feet shod with chunky black skate shoes bearing a single pink stripe. Didn’t get a look at her face, but her arm skin was white with white hairs standing up in a line to her wrist - he’d noticed that much. The scent of vanilla filled his nostrils, reminded him of a birthday cake shaped and decorated as a snowman, the one his mother had baked for his third birthday.
‘It’s okay,’ he said to the empty foyer.
Another buyer? A lingering daughter sent to pick up the rest of her things after the move? But she hadn’t been carrying anything on the way out, had she? No box of sweaters. No lamp or framed ar
t left behind by the movers. Huh. Must be just one of those chance encounters made possible by a house between occupants.
He turned back to the bedroom she’d just exited. It was decent size, maybe fourteen by sixteen. Two windows with bright red shades and black beaded tassels like something out of a western whorehouse. Deep pile the color of moist moss, didn’t match. No furniture. But the same scent of vanilla was here, stronger, with something herbal hanging beneath it. From the girl, or just the smell of the house? He felt a pang of regret like walking in on someone in the bathroom. Like if he’d been here a minute earlier he would have caught her in the middle of . . . what?
Conrad backed out of the room and left the door open. He wondered if Roddy had seen her go. He’d ask about her later, after he’d studied the library.
The library. The house had a library.
‘Hell, yeah,’ he said, entering a patch of sun pouring through a street-facing picture window. But even while he ran his fingers over the ornately carved fronts of the pine shelves, his mind returned to the girl. She reminded him of someone, but he couldn’t put his finger on whom. That didn’t make sense, though, did it? He hadn’t really seen her face. Maybe the shape of her body, something about the way she’d trotted down the stairs. Like a girl trying to get out before her parents could call her back and remind her of her curfew.
The house was nice, if somewhat anti-climactic. What makes this house a birthing house? What makes any house a birthing house, besides the fact that probably a lot of babies had been born under her roof? It didn’t feel like some sort of makeshift hospital ward or shelter where you’d have one large room with a bunch of beds, their occupants coughing on top of each other. It was just a house. So what if a doctor used to live here. Birth was life, life was good. Right?