The Seeing

Chapter Fourteen

The point-to-point race over four miles of rough country was underway, and when the powerful field of hunters came into view from the low meadows, an excited cheer rose from the crowd, but Eric Griffith thought bitterly, “I should have bet Plover’s Egg... dammit, dammit, dammit!”

The big roan mare, notably a strong finisher, had a length on the favorite, High Pockets, as they swept past the tawny row of maples that marked the start of the last quarter-mile to the finish line. Instead of Plover’s Egg, Eric had committed a reckless share of his dwindling funds on Harlequin, because he had overheard Colonel Innis making a sizeable bet on that entry, and now the pig was running dead last, its tail swishing about like an electric fan.

The crowds watching the point-to-point had gathered on the sprawling Cadwalader estate in eastern Maryland for a day of spring racing. In tweeds and cashmeres and burnished boots, they lined the homestretch, cheering on the tightening contest between High Pockets and Plover’s Egg. Others watched from cars on the high ground above the race course, tailgates loaded with wicker baskets and sparkling cocktail shakers.

“Plover’s Egg,” Eric thought again. Then he repeated the name aloud and a group of grooms standing near him laughed and one of them, without glancing at Eric, said, “He could be right, of course, which would make it an even once...”

The groom, a stocky man in his forties, was employed at the Cadwalader stables. His name, Eric knew, was Hank Dunker.

“That’s pretty good, Hank,” another groom said and laughed again. “Plover’s Egg... just to make it an even once.”

When Griffith realized they were referring to him, he felt a sudden warm and prickling heat in his cheeks. Sly, boorish louts, he thought, a sustaining anger growing inside him.

So far, it had been a disastrous day. He had lost the last four races and there was no hope for this one now, with Harlequin forty lengths behind the leaders. This was his last chance...

“Hank!” he said suddenly.

The groom turned and regarded him with masked eyes. “You call me, Mr. Griffith?”

“That’s right. I gather you don’t agree with my estimate of Plover’s Egg.”

“Well, you’re entitled to whatever you think.” His friends grinned and looked away. “But I don’t see this here Plover’s Egg holdin’ off High Pockets.”

“How would you like to back your judgment for, say, fifty dollars, Hank?”

“I expect you know the books are all closed on a race that’s runnin’...”

“Yes, I’m aware of that and I know from the fumes drifting my way that you and your friends have been drinking rot-gut. But isn’t that all beside the point? I have fifty dollars that says Plover’s Egg wins it.”

Hank glanced down the home stretch at the horses, only two hundred yards from the finish line now. His eyes narrowed alertly, and he rubbed his stubbled beard with the back of his hand. “Thing is, Mr. Griffith, I know where them horses will be after the race, they’ll be back in their stables. And I know where I’ll be after the race. Thing I’m not sure about is where you’ll be...”

“I see they’re teaching impudence on welfare now,” Eric Griffith said angrily, and pulled a fifty-dollar bill from his wallet. “Here’s my money. I suggest you put up or shut up now, Hank.”

Obviously resenting Griffith’s tone, the groom said in a surly voice, “All right, you got yourself a bet.” Climbing onto a fence that kept spectators off the course, Dunker cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted toward the charging horses.

“Move it, High Pockets! Stir those damned stumps of yours!”

The groom’s friends fanned out behind him, pounding each other on the shoulders and yelling encouragement at the favorite.

And to Eric’s dismay, he saw that the tide of the race was turning inexorably to High Pockets, who was now running like a smooth and effortless engine, while the roan mare was fighting the reins, her ears twitching — a sure sign she’d lost interest in the race.

He couldn’t even win here in a country meet, he thought in rage, with the purses provided by local charities and the proceeds from the refreshment booths marked for a pumping engine for a volunteer fire company. No, not here, and never mind the dream that had become a tiresome exercise in futility over the years — the thoughts of vindication in singing, winning weather at Hialeah or Del Mar or the fabled courses at the Curragh or the fence and brush at Aintree where they ran the Grand National.

Christ, Eric thought bitterly, feeling the familiar but always dreadful loser’s knot of anxiety tightening in his stomach. Dunker and his friends were still looking in the opposite direction, shouting boisterously now as High Pockets lengthened his lead over the field. Griffith took that opportunity to put his money away and slip off into the crowd.

After crossing the meadow on the opposite side of the finish line, he hurried off between rows of cars parked on the hill. He soon became aware that Hank Dunker and his cronies were pursuing him relentlessly through the crowd, leaping up and down to keep track of him, spreading out through the paddocks and behind the refreshment booth where the ladies from the local fire-company auxiliary were serving hot dogs and coffee.

Eric found sanctuary for several hopeful minutes in the narrow confines of a yellow metal portable privy. Then someone hammered on the door and a voice thick with laughter said, “Come on, pal, or there’s gonna be a damned Johnstown flood out here...”

Griffith took cover after that near the judges’ tent where Colonel (Lord Douglas) Innes, Mrs. Cadwalader’s houseguest for the weekend, stood talking to his hostess. He joined them, smiling, and pulled off his tweed hat in a deferential gesture to the old lady.

Secure for the moment, he relaxed and listened to Colonel Innes, a stocky, graying Highlander who was complimenting Mrs. Cadwalader on the organization of the day’s events. Then the colonel stared at Eric, his bushy eyebrows coming together in a straight line above his clear, cold eyes.

“Where did you get that tie, Griffith?”

“We dressed at the crack of dawn and there was barely any light—” To his chagrin, Griffith heard a stammer of nervous conciliation in his voice. He was caught; there was no way of conning this shrewd old colonel. Still, Eric made a weak effort saying, “I shared a room with a chap and we must have switched ties.”

“Probably didn’t belong to him, either. It’s the Scots Grays, of course.”

“Well, I wouldn’t know, sir,” Griffith said, glancing nervously at the red and orange stripes which had looked so festive and stirring in the Olde London Shoppe in Philadelphia.

“I can assure you I know it.” The colonel laughed without humor. “It’s my own regiment and we fly two hundred years’ of battle flags.”

“I wonder what Hank wants,” said Mrs. Cadwalader, a stout graying woman in mauve tweeds and low walking boots. “I believe he’s beckoning to you, Mr. Griffith. Did you have a bet with him? He’s making that rather timeless gesture with his thumb and forefinger.”

“As a matter of fact, I believe I did. It was such a small amount, it slipped my mind.”

“Then you’d better pay him what you owe him,” Mrs. Cadwalader said, and Griffith was stung by the fact that she hadn’t for an instant assumed that it might have been the other way around, that he’d won a bet from her boorish little groom, that the impudent bastard owed him money. But on second thought, he wouldn’t take it so personally. What churl, of Dunker’s caliber, he mused, goes in hot pursuit of a creditor? Griffith fished the fifty from his pocket and made his way, only slightly begrudgingly, to the gesturing groom.

Plover’s Egg, Eric Griffith thought with searing exasperation. He twisted on the hard narrow bed and reached for his glass of whiskey and water. He had stopped off at a motel on the outskirts of Lancaster, a row of dingy cabins that stood across the street from a storefront mission, whose facade was garish with flashing neon signs.

Griffith sipped his drink and put the glass back on the table beside the bed. His thoughts were rancorous and self-accusing. His ego had been shredded after all, by the abrasive encounters with Mrs. Cadwalader’s groom and that arrogant Scots bastard, Colonel Innis.

Plover’s Egg, he thought, disgusted with himself. What had made him bet on that glue-factory reject? In his heart he knew the answer to that, realized it was the toney, plummy sound of the name that had attracted him, words redolent of country estates and ladened sideboards and cheerful servants, the kind of life he had envied so long and pointlessly that it sometimes made him weak with anger to even think about it.

Over the years, as a kind of masochistic hobby, Eric Griffith had collected menus of hunt breakfasts and debutante teas, mortifying himself by studying the varieties of food and beverage laid out for the rich and privileged — tables of cold meats, York ham and roast beef; other tables for hot dishes, lamb chops, filets, sausages, and kidneys. And spread between them on snowy linen, silver dishes of kippers and grilled salmon, marmalade and muffins, creamy mounds of Scotch woodcock, fluffy omelettes and plovers’ eggs... There it was, as plain as day, the reason he had made that humiliating bet with Hank Dunker. Eric, driven by the man’s sneering familiarity, had played the squire of the manor then — “They teach impudence on welfare now...” He heard his own words again and was glad he said them.

Eric poured himself another touch of whiskey, and stood to turn down the volume of the television set. An announcer with a long, gray face was discussing the plight of the dollar in the Scandinavian countries.

He’d taught that coarse loudmouth a little trick or two after all, he thought, sipping the watered whiskey. Eric saw himself in a mirror hanging above an unpainted chest of drawers, the bare overhead light glinting on his blond hair and the bright stripes of his tie. He raised the glass to his image in an ironical toast.

“Here’s to you, Mr. Griffith. And screw everybody else, including those fancy Scots Grays.”

In a better humor, he stretched out on the bed, shifting his position to avoid the glare of the neon sign across the street. The “Jesus Saves” legend was flashing rhythmically and creating broken shafts of orange illumination around his room.

He smiled, thinking of the Cadwalader groom and relishing the inevitable scene, the sputtering denials, the flushed looks of shame, the stammered protestations of innocence.

Chuckling, he sipped his drink, only half-aware of the news bulletins from the television announcer. After the races that afternoon, Eric Griffith had unobtrusively joined the crowds flocking across the estate to the tea Mrs. Cadwalader had given in honor of Colonel Innis. Avoiding the hostess and the colonel, Eric had gulped down several large whiskies which was why he had stopped here in Lancaster for the night, too tired and boozy to drive the extra hour or so down to Chester County.

And it was while he stood quietly in the corner of the Cadwalader’s crowded library that the idea had come to him, complete and perfect in one exciting flash. He noticed a bronze incense burner which he identified as authentic Ming, his envious eye having become sharp and knowledgeable over the years. An ornate censor, sun-spotted with gold, and no bigger than a baby’s fist, sat next to a vase of daffodils on a table near an open window, a pie-crust table of shining cherrywood whose raised edges and detail of hardware told him its provenance, a mint Chippendale.

That’s when it had struck him, while he was nursing his drink and his grievances against a society whose conventions seemed designed solely to frustrate and humiliate him. You could damn the booze to your heart’s content, he thought, putting an arm across his eyes to shield them from the flash of the sign across the street. Sing the praises of clean living, all true enough, but when you needed a touch of guts and nerve to get you through a tight spot, nothing did the job better than a few jolts of whiskey.

Bolstered and assured by drink, his hand had moved with unerring speed to the Ming censor and he was gone with it in the same movement, easing through the crowd to the pantry and kitchens where he exchanged a few genial words with the staff before letting himself out into the gathering darkness behind the manor house.

In the grooms’ changing quarters near the horse barn, Eric had found Hank Dunker’s footlocker and wedged the Ming burner into a pair of sweat socks, stuffing these back under an assortment of trousers and knit underwear. (A friendly but anonymous telephone call to Mrs. Cadwalader in the morning would close the trap with finality. “A word from a friend who must be nameless... A pity. Your groom Hank, after all, probably has imprecise notions of right and wrong. But I did happen to see him reach through that open window in your library and snatch that little treasure...”)

Eric stood and toasted himself once again in the mirror.

The television announcer said, “...drew Dalworth, one of the world’s wealthiest and most famous industrialists, injured earlier today, remains in a coma, his condition listed as grave at his country estate, Easter Hill in Ireland.”

Eric Griffith smiled at the imaginary phone he was pretending to speak into. “Please, Mrs. Cadwalader, you mustn’t thank me. If our sort didn’t stick together, I can’t imagine what the world would come to.”

He went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. Reaching for a towel, he frowned suddenly, trying to grasp and remember what the announcer had just said. His thoughts swirled with whiskey, and he couldn’t pin it down. Somebody hurt, injured. An accident?

Turning on the water tap, he splashed more cold water on his face, feeling the coldness pierce his eyes and bring reality once again into focus. Dalworth, that was it, and Easter Hill, he knew those names. At the TV set, he knelt, drops of water streaming down his face, and listened with frustration to a beaming sportscaster talk about basketball and somebody setting picks.

Eric flipped from station to station, but there was nothing on but local news and police shows, cars racing into alleys, machine guns flashing like fireflies in the darkness. Gripped by a sense of excitement, Eric dressed hurriedly and left the room.

At the first intersection, he bought a newspaper from a battered vending machine. The story was on page one, below the fold, an old picture of Andrew Dalworth descending from an aircraft in Athens. The headline read: “Industrialist in Coma After Accident.” A subhead read: “Thrown from horse on Irish estate.” The dateline was UPI Dublin.

Standing there on the sidewalk, a wind stirring refuse in the gutters and the flashing lights of the “Jesus Saves” sign falling across the paper, Eric Griffith read the story twice, experiencing a thrill of personal involvement at the sight of familiar names and places. Easter Hill and Jessica Mallory and Andrew Dalworth, the Honeybelle stock farms in Kentucky, the Dalworth Holding Company... He knew them all, he realized with sustaining excitement, a sense of growing power.

Since the time he’d come across Jessica’s picture in Town and Country in the doctor’s office, Eric and Maud Griffith had kept a file on his niece, newspaper clippings and articles, items from the sports and financial pages relating to the Dalworth Stables and business enterprises, a piece in Vogue on the jade animal collection, a lay-out on Easter Hill in Architectural Digest, and other articles.

His thoughts were polarized, tightly circling two facts: in a coma... condition grave...

In his motel room again, he read the story a third time, aware of the sound of his heart thudding against his ribs. He felt wrapped up in this business, in some way an essential, vital part of it. He almost felt sorry for Dalworth, leaving so much...

And what of Jessica?

Eric Griffith sat sipping whiskey judiciously now, just a touch to keep his thoughts spinning smoothly, while a gray light of dawn mingled with the flash of the neon sign on his hard, thoughtful features.

Jessica... She would need help now, counsel, advice. Not the nudgings and maneuverings of managers and lawyers and accountants — cold, impersonal bastards out to fleece the child and feather their own nests. Now she needed, desperately needed, the warm and loving strength of her own family.

He stood and began pacing, twisting his big hands together and casting sidelong, almost furtive glances at the mirror, analyzing his appearance as he might a horse in an exercise ring, giving himself points for a high forehead, a straight nose, and eyes that appreared, when he smiled, to suggest an amiable honesty.

There were, on the other hand, the thinning blond hair, the fine network of cracked veins across his cheeks and, deep inside him — fortunately where it didn’t show — the self-pity and angers that could only be dissolved in whiskey or by Maudie’s annealing administrations.

He stared at himself in the mirror, knowing that he was close to something very important, quite literally the chance of a lifetime. Yet, in his envious observations of privilege, Eric had learned a great deal about the very rich. And he knew from bitter experience that they despised, above all, not the nouveau, because all money had become nouveau today. Oil money bred indiscriminately, after all, with sterling and Marks and Eurodollars and produced bastard offspring that deposited Iranian sheikhs in the delis of Beverly Hills and Greek shipping merchants on Park Avenue so scared of kidnapping that they instructed the doormen to address them by assumed names. No, nouveau was acceptable, Eric thought, with a flash of anger. Nobody gave a damn where you came from once you had it, but what the rich really hated were the pretenders, because they could truly and finally screw up the game for everybody.

And so, from the outset, he must establish credibility, deal from a secure financial base. Not join the whining beggars with cups who would be drawn toward Easter Hill like bees toward honey. He wouldn’t go through that groveling performance because the essential thing about Eric Griffith was not what the mirror reflected of him, and not even what the world might think of him, but the very genes and cells that linked him to Jessica, the blood from the same family that flowed through their veins.

He scooped up the phone and dialed the house on Black Velvet Lane. When Maud answered, saying, “Hello? Hello?” in a sleepy, irritable voice, Eric said quietly and insistently, “Maud, I want you to listen carefully to what I’m going to tell you. Don’t ask questions. Just listen to what—”

“Is that you, Eric?”

“Of course, it is. Did you think it was Sinatra with a singing telegram?”

“You said you’d be home tonight. Where are you, Eric? I’ve had this funny ache in—”

He sighed and said, “I’m sorry, Maud. Now forget that and listen to me. I want you to call Tony Saxe first thing in the morning. Set up an appointment for both of us tomorrow at his club, anytime that’s convenient for him.”

“Eric, what have you been up to?” Her voice was sharper.

“I’ll explain when I see you at Tony’s.”

“Well, okay. I guess I wouldn’t mind seeing the old place again.”

Maud had sung at Tony Saxe’s club in Camden, New Jersey when she was married to Tony, crooning of lost loves and smokey afternoons in a pleasant but reedy little voice, whose vibrations went largely unnoticed by the patrons — hostile people with a look of challenge about them, talking usually of sex and fixed fights and ward politics.

“You’ve got just one other thing to do, luv,” Eric said into the phone. “Bring along that file, the manila folder in my desk. It’s in the top drawer, the one with all that stuff on Jessica Mallory...”

Stretching out on the unmade bed, Eric laced his hands behind his head and smiled thoughtfully at the ceiling. He felt charged with confidence now, unintimidated by the thought of mingling his interests with the world of Tony Saxe, an arena of cunning tricks and deceits, a world of street-smart hustlers.

Eric felt keenly alive and hungry. He wanted breakfast, a big one, eggs and a ham steak, the yolks pricked and running into the hashed browns, a stack of buttered toast to mop it up with, and cups of hot black coffee. He wanted a woman, achingly and surprisingly, and a stinging shower, fresh clothes, wanted to be in one of those dark New York bars, the faint, smoke-streaked light breaking on rows of bottles and glasses, and a girl, perhaps a young actress, glancing at him from the corner of her eyes, wondering at his secret, confident smile.

The neon sign from the storefront church across the street flashed against his face, the garish tones softened by the spreading morning light. He wondered why he found it so exasperating. Perhaps it was just his normal reaction to fanatics with their convictions of eternal chumminess with the Lord, hopeless losers with their ridiculous, credulous Faith and Tithings, their tiny plastic saints hanging from windshields, blatantly arrogant bumper stickers proclaiming their faith in the Second Coming, their rapture in spiritual sex or unisex or some damned thing, their joy in having found It or lost It or shot It into a side pocket, every car begging to be rear-ended.

Suddenly, an involuntary shudder went through Eric’s body. Sitting up, he stared in a growing understanding and consternation at the tremor in his hands. He reached for the bottle and drank the last half-inch of whiskey straight from the neck, feeling the raw heat of the drink in his throat but realizing it wouldn’t touch a deep, anxious coldness that had settled in the pit of his stomach.

He knew now why those flashing church lights had irritated him at first and why they frightened him now, bringing with them as they did the nearly-forgotten memory of a disapproving lady with cold eyes and a bumper sticker on her blue Volkswagen.