She looked down at her shirt now. The buttons looked about ready to pop. now that I’m assigned to Whitby House. That’s something else I can do, I can go into the village and find some seamstress who could take care my uniforms for me. Somewhere in the house-and I will find them if it takes me two weeks-are a half dozen or more of Edward’s uniforms. I’ll have them cut down for me, even if every stitch has to be taken out of them and the uniform started from scratch. With her nakedness now more or les’s covered, she carefully opened the door, found no one in the foyer, and slipped out, walking quickly down the corridor toward the kitchen.
From there stairs led upstairs. With no one in it, the kitchen seemed enormous. The six huge black stoves-now cold-were larger than she remembered them. The Americans apparently were not going to trouble themselves with coal stoves, as there were now two stainless-steel field ranges where the butcher blocks had been. And still in a crate addressed to Quartermaster ETO-European Theater of Operations-was a huge, restaurant-size refrigerator. Beside it, the Whitby House refrigerator looked incongruously small. to see if there was something to eat in She gave in to the temptation before, and she the old refrigerator. She had missed supper the night would be damned if she would ask Major Canidy for a meal. inside she found an almost unbelievable cornucopia of foodstuffs. There were, for starters, at least six dozen fresh eggs. The British ration was one fresh egg per week-when available. There were two-gallon containers of milk marked “Container Property US Army Quartermaster Corps.” Only children under four, pregnant women, and nursing women were given a milk ration. hams, pound There were steaks, chickens, two enormous tinned blocks of fresh butter “[Butter, 1 lb Block, Grade AAA, Schmalz’s Dairy, Oshkosh, Wisc. USAV’ and, the most incredible thing of all, a wooden crate marked “Sun kist Florida Oranges.”
My God, there must be eight, ten, twelve dozen oranges! Captain the Duchess Stan field could not remember the last time she had had an orange. They were rationed out to British children even more strictly than eggs and milk. No wonder, she thought as she slammed the door angrily, our refrigerator is inadequate for their needs. When she was in the stairwell she began to consider the most likely place the staff would have put her clothing. The answer was immediately obvious.
There were two small rooms just above what had been her own apartment where her personal maid-now a Leading Aircraftswornan, Royal Air Force-had lived. just as she had hoped, a neatly lettered sign was thumbtacked to her personal maid’s door:
ROOMS CONTAIN THE PERSONAL EFFECTS 01 S, THE DUKE AM DUCHESS OF STANFIEASK THAT THEY NOT BE DISTURBED.
And the door was not locked. The small room was crowded with steamer trunks, ordinary luggage, and even some paper cartons, all neatly labeled, She was lifting a cardboard box labeled “HG Personal Summer Linen” when an automobile horn blared. It was cheerfully tooting Shave and a haircut, two bits. She wondered what peculiarity of American culture that represented. When the horn sounded again, she grew more curious. When it sounded a third time, she went to the window and looked down. An American army car, a Ford, had pulled up to the house.
As she watched, a young American Air Corps captain stepped out, A rather good-looking one, Captain the Duchess Stan field thought. He had his cap, with its crown crushed, on the back of his head. For some reason, American pilots felt that was chic.
His jacket was open, his tie pulled down, and he wore the self-pleased look of someone in his cups. He went to the trunk and opened it, then returned to the driver’s door and blew the horn again, this time a long, steady, almost angry blast.
At the same moment the duchess was noticing that the Ford’s left front fender was crumpled, a window below her, Edward’s window, opened and Major Canidy looked out. “I thought you were in the stockade,” he called down. The duchess remembered Canidy had said something about Lieutenant Jamison being off “stealing a car in London.”