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.