Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of the Somerset Sisters Read online

  Mrs. Hunt came in just in time to rescue her pillowcases from a big pair of flashing scissors, for the girls were going to cut the cases up to make pretend haiks for the Moroccan souk and bridal scene.

  “Time to go home, ladies,” she said, prying the scissors from Natalie’s hand and surveying the mess of feathers, colored paper, and other props that had been used in the Somerset reenactments. “It’s nearly dinnertime,” she added, hustling the girls out of the room.

  On her way out, Cornelia looked with great surprise at the clock on Natalie’s bedside table and saw that it was almost six. Usually on her rare after-school playdates, she was home by four at the latest. Surprised at how much she’d enjoyed herself, Cornelia leaned back happily in the leather seat of Mrs. Hunt’s car as they drove back downtown.

  “See you tomorrow!” shouted Natalie from the car window when Cornelia got out. “You have to come over again next week—and bring more stories!”

  Cornelia waved good-bye. If things had gone this well today, Cornelia thought to herself in the elevator, she would soon need more material from Virginia to act out. Cornelia resolved to visit Virginia more than she already did.

  The Scheherazade next door now had a demand to meet, and a reputation to uphold.

  Madame Desjardins was equally surprised that Cornelia had been gone all afternoon. She left a vat of vichyssoise potato and leek soup gurgling on the stove and followed Cornelia upstairs, asking her an onslaught of questions about her time at Natalie’s house. Finally, Cornelia told Madame Desjardins that she was suffering from a bout of pnigerophobia (“a dread of being smothered”), which Madame Desjardins assumed was some sort of headache. She brought Cornelia’s dinner up to her on a tray that evening. Lucy, as usual, dined out at a restaurant.

  Cornelia didn’t want to wait until the next day to tell Virginia about her afternoon. After she ate her supper, she made a great show of bringing her backpack into the study and settling down to do her homework.

  “I need some privacy,” she told Madame Desjardins, and she closed the door. She listened as Madame Desjardins cleaned the kitchen and then clumped upstairs to watch television. She waited until she heard the canned laughter of an old sitcom upstairs.

  Then she quietly opened the door to the study and tiptoed down the hallway, out the front door, and over to Virginia’s apartment next door.

  Cornelia rang the front bell. No one answered. She impatiently rang again after a minute. Nothing. Cornelia stared in frustration at the blue ATTENTION! CHIEN BIZARRE sign, and silently willed Patel to open the door. After a few more minutes, she gave the bell one last ring, ready to give up. Then she heard footsteps from inside, coming down the stairs.

  “Yes?” said Patel, opening the door abruptly. He looked down and saw Cornelia standing there. “Oh, Cornelia,” he said.

  “Hello, Patel-ji,” Cornelia said, brushing past him and into the front foyer. She started to take off her shoes.

  “I’ve come for a cup of tea with Virginia,” she said.

  Patel looked tired and worried. “This evening is not good,” he said after a moment. “Virginia cannot have tea with you at this time.”

  “Oh,” said Cornelia.

  “She is not well,” said Patel, looking up the stairs. “I mean, she is very tired tonight.”

  “Oh,” said Cornelia again, feeling very small and deflated all of the sudden.

  “But maybe tomorrow she will feel better,” said Patel, trying to sound more buoyant. Cornelia noticed that for the first time in weeks, his hands weren’t covered in paint. She glanced up the staircase, half hoping to see Virginia standing at the top of it. Then she put her shoes on again and said good night. She slipped back into her apartment and finished her homework.

  After school the next day, she rang their doorbell again. Cornelia was sure that Virginia had rested enough by now, and imagined her sitting at her desk in her English library, tapping away on her old typewriter. But once again, Cornelia had to ring several times before Patel opened the door.

  “Good afternoon, Cornelia-ji,” he said. He had dark circles under his eyes.

  “Is Virginia better?” asked Cornelia, not feeling confident enough today to walk into the foyer. Mister Kinyatta barked from the kitchen.

  Patel rubbed his temples with his forefingers as if he had a headache. “I’m afraid she is not,” he said. “She is still very weary.” He turned around and said, “Shush!” in the direction of the kitchen.

  “Cornelia,” he said, brightening slightly. “Would you mind taking Mister Kinyatta for a walk? He is cooped up all day in the kitchen.”

  “Okay,” said Cornelia, still disheartened about being refused admission to tea with Virginia. But the prospect of playing with Mister Kinyatta was a comforting compensation.

  She took the dog to the park near their house and let him stump around the bushes and tree trunks. Strong as a little mule, he tugged on his leash as he strained to sniff this branch and inspect that leaf. Every once in a while, he turned back and looked at Cornelia as if wondering why she—and not Virginia or Patel—was at the other end of the leash.

  This arrangement went on for the rest of the week. Each day after school, Cornelia stopped by the apartment next door to inquire about Virginia. And each day Patel told Cornelia that Virginia still could not receive guests, and asked her to walk Mister Kinyatta.

  Cornelia became confused and worried about why Virginia wouldn’t see her. Was Virginia tired of telling Cornelia her stories? Or worse, was she bored by Cornelia’s company? Had Cornelia been impolite or said something wrong? She racked her memory, trying to recall if she had done or said something to upset Virginia. She couldn’t think of anything, and even began to panic about being cursed. After all, her father was totally indifferent to her and Lucy seemed to need her distance too. And now even Virginia seemed to be losing interest in Cornelia.

  But despite all of her dark fears and doubts, Cornelia always took Mister Kinyatta’s leash from Patel and led the dog out of their building. The pair would walk around the neighborhood, sometimes to the park, sometimes to the bakery, and sometimes to the bookstore. Once Cornelia took him to Zoomies pet store and bought him a doggie cookie shaped like a crown.

  By Friday, the little dog waited for Cornelia by the gate in the kitchen doorway, barking and leaping when he saw her. They were becoming good friends.

  “Virginia-ji would like you to join her for tea upstairs,” said Patel as he opened the front door the next day.

  A flood of relief washed over Cornelia, but uneasiness crept into her as she followed Patel up the stairs. Why wasn’t Virginia downstairs typing her story? Or spying on neighbors from the French drawing room, or sipping mint tea in the Moroccan forest room? She was about to ask Patel, when they reached a door at the end of the upstairs hallway.

  “Here we are,” said Patel, opening the door. “Cornelia-ji is here to see you,” he announced to Virginia inside.

  As she stepped into the room, Manhattan seemed to melt away and Cornelia found herself inside what seemed like an ancient temple in India. A scratchy layer of chalky sky-blue paint covered all of the walls, making the room seem as cool and calm as an indolent, faraway sea. Marble, the color of pale opals, paved the floor. The huge bronze statue of Saraswati, with her crown and instrument, stood facing out an enormous arched window, as if ruling over the Hudson River below.

  And as if this weren’t lovely enough, a second, cloistered room had been constructed inside the larger room. Each of its four walls had a huge arch carved out of it, and white flowing curtains covered the openings.

  “Cornelia, I’m in here,” said Virginia’s voice from inside the cloister.

  Cornelia saw Virginia’s silhouette through the filmy drapes. She drew a curtain aside to reveal the writer sitting in a soft white bed with a white gauze canopy cascading over it. Virginia wore a long grass-green silk robe and her hair was tied up in a silk scarf the color of jade.

  Cornelia tentatively sat on a whi
te chair next to Virginia’s bed. Virginia, already slender to begin with, had lost weight. Her cheekbones jutted out in sharp arcs below the dark areas under her eyes, and the hollows in her cheeks seemed much deeper. A ripple of alarm ran through Cornelia, and she remembered for the first time in months that Virginia was an old lady. A streak of sunlight fell across Virginia’s face, making her scarf seem greener than emeralds. Her tired eyes still shone mischievously, which reassured Cornelia ever so slightly.

  “Finally, you get to see the Indian room,” Virginia said softly. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

  “It’s beautiful,” said Cornelia as the peacefulness of the room soothed her. “It feels like summer to me.”

  Virginia smiled and looked around. “That’s how it makes me feel as well. Light as a petal and calm as a still night.”

  She pulled aside one of the white curtains and gazed through the window at the river. “Even so, the main reason I love this room is because of the view. You know how nosy I am. I like to know everything that’s happening around me at all times. From where I’m sitting on this bed, I can see everything that’s happening on land, river, and sky—and that is very gratifying.”

  She turned her attention back to Cornelia. “Patel tells me that you’ve been taking care of Mister Kinyatta this week. I can’t tell you how much we appreciate it. And that dog won’t let just anybody take him for a walk, you know. He clearly adores you.”

  Virginia’s praise took away some of the chill inside Cornelia, but her stomach still tingled nervously. Suddenly she felt the old urge to shield and numb herself with long words.

  “Have you been inflicted with a malady?” she asked.

  “You’ve been indisposed for nearly a fortnight.” This was her way of asking Virginia if she’d been ill for the past week or two.

  Virginia paused. “It’s true that I haven’t been feeling very well,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “But today I have more energy. Look.”

  She pointed to a little table next to her bed. The old black typewriter sat there, with a sheet of white paper wedged into the top. A stack of paper covered in sentences rested next to it.

  “The writing has been going very well,” Virginia told Cornelia. “I’ve written a whole chapter this afternoon alone.”

  “That’s splendiferous,” said Cornelia. “When can I read it?”

  “Soon. Have some patience, old girl,” smiled Virginia. “Not that I have ever had any patience, but it’s such easy advice to dispense to someone else.”

  “Well, can you tell me another story in the meantime?” Cornelia asked impatiently. “I need some new material right away.”

  “You need material?” asked Virginia quizzically.

  “Why?”

  Cornelia took a deep breath. “I made some new friends at school, and the other day, I told them your stories about Morocco and France and England,” she said, hoping that Virginia wouldn’t mind. “We turned them into plays and acted them out. We even made matching hats and stuffed Abby’s clothes full of pillows so she could be Gladys.”

  “Well,” Virginia said, leaning back into her pillows.

  “I’m honored to be your muse, and delighted to hear that the audacious escapades of the Somerset sisters are passing into legend already. You know that you’re someone special when you inspire an art form while you’re still alive. And who did you get to play?”

  Cornelia blushed. “You,” she said, suddenly shy. “You’re not mad that I told other people your stories, are you?”

  “Of course not!” exclaimed Virginia, sitting up straight as a poker. “They’re meant to be shared. That’s the whole point of them. I’m just delighted that you’ve deemed these girls worthy enough of both your company and the tales. Bravo, Cornelia.”

  “Will you tell me another story?” pleaded Cornelia.

  “Could you please tell me what you’re writing? Please?”

  Virginia shook her head. “Not yet,” she said. “That one isn’t finished yet, and I won’t tell a story unless I’ve determined its end. All story endings should be either witty or meaningful—preferably both.”

  She paused. “Notice I didn’t say that story endings should be tidy, Cornelia,” she added solemnly. “Very few stories have tidy endings, or entirely happy ones. But a story can have a positive ending without it being wholly happy. The one that I’m writing now has just that sort of ending. I know that it’s going to be sad, but good things will come of the events in it.”

  “I wish that you would just tell me what it’s about,” said Cornelia, frustrated. “You’ve been writing for weeks and won’t read anything to me. Patel’s been painting for weeks, and he won’t show me anything. I thought that you just said stories are supposed to be shared with other people.”

  “All right, all right,” Virginia said, lying back again.

  “If there’s one thing I hate, it’s being caught in a contradiction, so I’ll offer you this concession. Where’s your mother today? I’ll tell you a story about whatever country she is in. And then you can surprise her with how much you know about where she’s been when she comes home.”

  “She is at home, here in New York,” Cornelia said.

  “For once.” She looked around the room. “Will you tell me a story about India instead?”

  Virginia closed her eyes for a minute. Cornelia felt a surge of shame about exhausting her friend. “Are you too tired?” she asked guiltily. “Do you want me to come back another day?”

  Virginia opened her eyes. “No,” she said. “Today is better than tomorrow.” She was quiet for a moment. “Okay, I’ll tell you about India. That’s where I met Patel, remember? And by the way, did you see the paintings in this room?”

  Cornelia walked out of the cloister and up to a vertical line of small paintings hanging on one of the walls. Intricate and brilliantly colored, the images looked like they belonged in a museum, or at the very least, in one of the wonderful old books in Virginia’s English library.

  “Patel painted those many, many years ago,” Virginia called from her bed. “When he was around your age—can you believe it? They’re scenes of India’s history. Filled with gods and princes, invaders and defenders.”

  Cornelia stared at them, astonished. The pictures were so fine that she couldn’t believe that they’d been done by an eleven-year-old child. She reached out and ran her fingers over them, sure that the vivid reds would be hot to the touch, and the blues cool.

  Virginia watched Cornelia’s reaction to the pictures and said, “I’m trying to decide what to tell you about, but there are so many stories to choose from! Stories about temples and monsoons, about festivals and elephants and rebellions. And, oh! The story about when Gladys became a movie star in Bollywood! That’s the Indian version of Hollywood, by the way.”

  Virginia grew excited as she talked, but then she faltered and seemed to wilt a little bit. She sat back and was quiet. And then she told Cornelia, “It would take me years to tell you everything that I want to. But I have enough energy for only one story today—and this tale means more to me than all of the other ones put together.”

  Cornelia ran back to her chair next to the bed and sat down. Virginia’s sudden seriousness worried and intrigued her, and she leaned forward to make sure that she heard every word.

  Virginia closed her eyes again. “Cornelia, you simply wouldn’t believe the colors of India,” she said.

  And the Scheherazade of Greenwich Street began to tell her story.

  Chapter Ten

  India, 1954

  “‘I’ve never seen such vibrant colors in my life,’ Alexandra said to us as we tore through the streets of Bombay in another rickety old car. So many people and animals filled the streets that every five minutes, our driver had to grind the car to a halt, pitching us into each other’s laps. We bumped down a street lined with low houses with bright red roofs.

  “‘Is that fruit up there, drying on the tops of those buildings?’ Gladys said. ‘Pull over—I
want to get some. I’m starving.’

  “Our driver laughed. ‘Trust me, memsahib—you do not want to eat those fruits,’ he said. ‘You will be very sorry if you do. They are sun-dried chilies, hot enough to start a fire.’

  “‘Oh,’ said Gladys, still eyeing the peppers.

  “We careened past a long stall where two ladies were hanging up dyed saris, the bright dresses Indian women wore draped around their bodies. Hanging side by side on a clothesline, the dresses formed a billowing rainbow of greens, blues, pinks, purples, and oranges.

  “We had only gotten to India an hour earlier. Like I told you, we ran away from England after Gladys’s performance at the dog show. We left Messieurs Un, Deux, Trois, and Quatre with a good friend in London, because the sea journey would have been too hard for four French bulldogs. We promised to come back for them in a few months.

  “Now, years before, when our father was at Oxford University, he’d met an Indian prince, a maharaja, who studied at the same college. This prince’s name was Nihar Singh, maharaja of Maharashtra. We had never met this prince before, but boldly wrote to him from England and asked if we could visit his grand palace just outside the city. Within a week, we had our reply, written on a long scroll of paper:

  Dear Somerset sisters,

  I am always delighted to welcome the children of important people to my home. Prepare to be impressed by my majestic presence and splendid palace. You shall be treated like royalty.

  Yours truly,

  Nihar Singh,

  Maharaja of Maharashtra

  “Naturally, we accepted his hospitable offer. Over the Atlantic Ocean we sailed, through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean Sea, through the famous Suez Canal into the Red Sea and then the Indian Ocean and into the Arabian Sea after that—until finally we saw the famous Gateway of India shining on the sunny shores of Bombay. Our legs were so shaky from our long sea voyage that we wobbled like newborn colts through the gateway’s regal arch. Our driver spotted us easily amidst the hundreds of people at the dock and ferried us off to our new home in Bombay.