Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of the Somerset Sisters Page 3

  Cornelia followed him and peeked around the corner to see what was happening. The object in question appeared to be a small black French bulldog, who was very crafty and fast and clearly not ready to be marched back into the apartment. Every time the man leaped for Mister Kinyatta, the dog darted past him and wheeled around like a tiny bull, challenging the man to lunge for him again.

  “Ugh!” groaned the man to Cornelia. His turban had shifted sideways on his head. “He looks like a clown but he is really a little devil! He taunts everyone except Virginia-ji, especially me.” The dog was so excited by now that his eyes seemed to be going in opposite directions. “Come here, Mister Kinyatta!” the man bellowed helplessly.

  “I know how to get him back into the apartment,” Cornelia said. This was practically a speech for her, since she barely uttered a word to people she knew—much less to a stranger. She rustled the bag from the Magnolia Bakery and Mister Kinyatta snapped to attention.

  “Oooh—what is it—food?” the little man cried hopefully. “He loves food.”

  Mister Kinyatta stood a few feet from Cornelia, looking her up and down. His ears stood up on his head like boat sails. Cornelia rattled the bag again, opening it a little bit and showing the dog what was inside.

  “Mmmmmmm,” she said enticingly. “Cupcakes.” Mister Kinyatta took a few steps toward her, licking his chops. Cornelia backed up toward the apartment, and the dog followed her. By the time she had triumphantly lured Mister Kinyatta into the apartment, the dog was running around her ankles and leaping up into the air.

  The man marched in after them. Now that the situation was under control, he assumed an air of authority. “Bring him into the kitchen, miss!” he instructed importantly. “Yes! Very good!” He reached up and straightened his turban.

  As soon as all three of them were in the kitchen, the man reached into a ceramic jar that teetered on top of several unopened moving boxes and extracted a treat for Mister Kinyatta. He threw it across the kitchen floor and the dog ran after it.

  “Quick—run out of the kitchen!” the man yelled, pointing theatrically toward the corridor. He and Cornelia ran out into the hallway, and the man snapped a gate into place in the doorframe behind them, trapping Mister Kinyatta in the kitchen.

  The man stood next to Cornelia. He ran his fingers through his beard and smoothed down his shirt. Now that they were standing side by side, Cornelia noticed that he was only a bit taller than she was. She thought that he must have been Madame Desjardins’s age, around sixty years old.

  “Thank you very much, young miss,” the man managed to say after a minute. “He is usually crazy, but not this crazy. He is very excited about the move.”

  Cornelia nodded, but then she got distracted by the apartment around her. It was very similar to her big white echoing home next door—but even with all of the moving boxes still littered around it, the space already seemed completely different, even fascinating. Several enormous potted palm trees stood in a makeshift forest in the living room at the end of the corridor. In the corridor, dozens of silk pillows were stacked in brightly colored towers, and some of them spilled like a luxurious waterfall onto the floor. Amidst the pillows lay a wonderful old-fashioned record player with a big horn, a warped record spinning lazily on its turntable. At the end of the hallway loomed a huge bronze statue of a woman wearing an elaborate headpiece and holding a strange musical instrument. It was beautiful and frightening to Cornelia at the same time.

  The man followed Cornelia’s gaze. “That is Virginiaji’s statue of Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of knowledge and the arts. It came all the way from India,” he said. “By the way, I am Patel.”

  Cornelia nodded, her usual shyness stealing back into her. “It was nice to meet you,” she said, turning to leave. “I’m late for dinner.”

  Just at that moment, a willowy old woman opened the front door and walked in. She carried several shopping bags and was putting her keys into her small silk purse. She didn’t see Cornelia and the man standing there.

  “Patel, I’m home,” she called out tiredly. She took off her gloves and started unbuttoning her elegant black coat. A silk scarf covered her hair. Patel walked over to help her with her coat and packages.

  “We have a guest,” he announced as he ferried her coat off to the front closet.

  “Oh. Hello,” said the woman, noticing Cornelia for the first time. “Who are you?”

  She had the most lovely, radiant face, even though wrinkles surrounded her eyes. She wore a floor-length silk dress and several long strands of pearls. Glistening rings adorned her fingers. She was very thin and pale, and seemed to Cornelia to belong to a different era, when people took only black-and-white pictures.

  “I’m Cornelia S. Englehart,” Cornelia replied.

  She was torn now: on one hand, she knew that Madame Desjardins was probably wringing her hands and calling the police because she had been gone for so long. On the other hand, this woman seemed so compelling and warm that Cornelia—for the first time in her life—wanted to stay a little while.

  “From next door,” Patel offered from afar, his voice muffled in the coat closet.

  “What a charming name,” the woman said. “I am Virginia Somerset. Patel and I and Mister Kinyatta are your new neighbors.”

  “The beast ran into the hall, and this smart girl lured him back into the kitchen with her bag of food,” Patel informed Virginia helpfully as he reappeared at her side. Mister Kinyatta heard his mistress’s voice and leaped up and down behind his gate.

  “How clever of you, Cornelia S. Thank goodness you reined him in, for I don’t know what I’d do with myself if he ran away,” Virginia said, reaching over the gate and stroking his head with great affection. Strangely, the dog began to make purring noises. Cornelia listened in surprise, completely enraptured by this odd little animal.

  “Cornelia-ji was leaving to go home,” Patel said. “She is late for dinner.”

  Virginia smiled, deepening the friendly creases around her eyes. “One should never be late for dinner,” she said, looking down at Cornelia and her bakery bag. “Especially when there are Magnolia cupcakes for dessert. But before you go, tell me: Do you like books, by any chance?”

  Cornelia nodded.

  “Well, then,” Virginia said. “You must visit with us when we’re done unpacking. I have the most wonderful library. Everyone falls in love with it. It’s like a field of poppies—no one ever wants to leave. Come by for a cup of tea soon, and I’ll show it to you.”

  “Do you have dictionaries?” Cornelia blurted out, and then wished she hadn’t.

  “Why, of course,” Virginia answered. “And in many languages as well.” She and Patel looked quizzically at their guest.

  Cornelia’s face reddened. “It was very nice to meet you,” she said, and walked to the door. Patel escorted her out.

  “Maybe you will come and keep Virginia-ji company sometime,” he said as Cornelia stepped into the hallway.

  “You should know that she does not ask everyone, although there are many who want invitations,” he added gravely. “Good night,” he said. With a slight bow, he began to close the door.

  “Wait!” said Cornelia.

  Patel peeked out again. “Yes?”

  “What does it mean?” Cornelia asked, pointing to the blue sign above the doorknob.

  Patel leaned around the door to gaze at it. “Ah,” he said, tapping the sign with his fingernail. “Chien bizarre. It means ‘a bizarre dog lives here.’ And now you know this is true. Good night, Cornelia-ji.”

  And with that, Patel shut the door, closing Cornelia off from the unusual world inside.

  Madame Desjardins was busy harassing the staff at the Magnolia Bakery on the phone when Cornelia walked in.

  “I do not care if you have cakes to make! Go out and look for her right away! Search the streets!” she shouted. Then, mid-sentence, the housekeeper saw Cornelia standing there. She slammed the phone down on the cradle and burst into tears.

/>   “Eiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Cornelia Street Englehart! Where have you been? You make me age ten years in the last hour!!! Look at me! I am an old lady now—with a weak heart!” Madame Desjardins howled. This went on for quite some time.

  Yet later that evening, as they ate the coq au vin chicken stew together for dinner (which, by the way, was very good, despite the way Cornelia had slandered it earlier), Madame Desjardins calmed down enough to notice something different about Cornelia. She didn’t seem as withdrawn; nor did she speak in strange tongues as she had been doing lately. Madame Desjardins’s first inclination was to worry about the change. And then she decided to enjoy this unexpected gift instead of questioning where it came from.

  Later that evening, after she’d tucked Cornelia into bed, the housekeeper took a break from watching Gone with the Wind on television and tiptoed down the upstairs hallway.

  For the first time in a long time, she didn’t hear Cornelia crying behind her closed bedroom door.

  Chapter Three

  Virginia

  Several weeks went by. Lucy left again, this time on vacation (a “retreat,” she called it) in Morocco, a country on the northwest coast of Africa (as Cornelia learned from checking a big atlas in the school library). On her way out the door, Lucy promised to send a crate of presents, of “rugs and silver and I don’t know—gorgeous things.” Cornelia’s mouth made a hard little line when she heard this. She wouldn’t be fooled again by any boxes coming to the apartment from foreign countries.

  Madame Desjardins never had a cross word for or about her employer, but Cornelia overheard her talking to Walter about Lucy. Cornelia walked into the lobby after school one afternoon and saw the two of them conspiring over the front desk.

  “She is never home,” Madame Desjardins whispered to Walter, “and now Cornelia Street is growing up without a mother or a father. She sees more of Madame Lucille on the cover of a CD than in their home.”

  Then both Walter and Madame Desjardins shook their heads tragically. When Madame Desjardins saw Cornelia standing there listening, she exclaimed, “Zut alors!” and swept the girl upstairs. Neither of them mentioned the incident again.

  Cornelia thought constantly about Virginia, Patel, and Mister Kinyatta. The moving boxes in the hallway had long since been taken into the apartment next door, reemerged empty, and been thrown away. Then for several weeks, dusty workers went in and out of Virginia’s apartment, carrying toolboxes, crowbars, electric saws, and lots of marble slabs. Cornelia and Madame Desjardins heard the sound of hammers tapping and drills whirring and heavy furniture being arranged. But the building was old and the walls thick, so they didn’t hear or see much else once the initial fanfare was over.

  Shyness prevented Cornelia from visiting her neighbors again. She knew that she was being silly—after all, Virginia and Patel had both given her special invitations to stop by—but she couldn’t help it. While she tried to overcome her bashfulness, Cornelia thought about the world next door when she went to sleep at night and again when she woke up in the morning. She was filled with questions. What had been in all of those hundreds of boxes? And those palm trees—where had they all come from, and why did Virginia and Patel need them? To grow coconuts? But why would they need to grow coconuts when they could just buy them in a store? Did Virginia have lots of beds in there, and if not, then why did they need so many silk pillows?

  Finally, a combination of bursting curiosity and sheer boredom made Cornelia put aside her timidity and ring Virginia Somerset’s doorbell. It was Monday, February 19—Presidents’ Day—and Cornelia had the day off from school. It had rained all weekend—an ugly late-winter rain. Madame Desjardins was near despair, since Cornelia had been stuck inside and underfoot the whole time.

  Today, however, the cold downpours stopped after lunch, and Cornelia immediately tugged on her boots as if she were going outside. She galloped into the study, where Madame Desjardins giggled at the cartoons in the New York Post.

  “Can I go for a walk?” Cornelia asked.

  Madame Desjardins jumped with surprise behind her newspaper and gave her ward immediate permission to go.

  Cornelia closed the front door to her apartment and ambled over to Virginia’s door. Before she could lose her nerve again, she reached out and rang the bell. Soft footsteps approached the door on the other side.

  “Yes?” said Patel as he peered out. “Oh! Cornelia-from-next-door.” He saw her coat and boots. “You were outside in this monstrous weather?” Cornelia nodded piteously. “Would you like a cup of tea with Virginia-ji to warm up?” Cornelia nodded again, and Patel let her in.

  “Virginia-ji will be most delighted to see you,” Patel told Cornelia as she pulled off her boots in the front foyer. “Come with me.”

  Cornelia followed him in her stockinged feet down the corridor. All of the doors to the rooms along the way were closed. Long velvet curtains covered the far end of the hallway, concealing the living room on the other side.

  “Cornelia-ji to visit,” Patel announced as he grandly opened the curtains over the entrance to the living room. Cornelia entered the room, and a wave of amazement washed over her. She couldn’t believe that her familiar apartment was just thirty feet away on the other side of the wall, for this room was surely as exotic as Lucy’s Moroccan retreat.

  Before she could help herself, Cornelia counted the palm trees. Eight, nine, twelve, fifteen…twenty in all! And they were actually planted right in the floor itself. The trees sloped majestically above the entrance to the room and framed a huge arched window in the far wall. The palm fronds softened the light coming in from outside and cast intricate shadow patterns on the floor (which, by the way, was not made from wood like the floors in Cornelia’s apartment, but rather cool white marble tiles). Colored-glass lanterns swung lazily from the branches, occasionally glinting in the sunlight like rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and diamonds.

  In the middle of this forest, under a canopy of fronds, sat a Moroccan daybed with tall, curving sides, like an Arabian sleigh. The silk pillows that Cornelia remembered made opulent piles on top of the bed, and dozens more of them were scattered throughout the room. Underneath the bed lay the thickest, most luxurious Oriental carpet Cornelia had ever seen. It stretched out like a silken bed of grass beneath the palm branches.

  And in the middle of the room, in the middle of that wonderful bed, was Virginia Somerset, deeply absorbed in a book.

  She wore another long, flowing dress and her fingers sparkled with jewels. A scarf woven from gold filaments wreathed her hair. She looked up from her book and smiled when she saw Cornelia. Her cheekbones curved into huge half-moons. She looked like a wise, glamorous countess.

  “Cornelia S. Englehart,” Virginia said. “How good of you to come. I was just about to have some tea—would you like to join me?” She patted the daybed and said,

  “Patel, mint tea, please.”

  Patel nodded. “Of course,” he said, and whooshed out through the curtains.

  Cornelia was sure that few princesses had ever luxuriated on a daybed as gorgeous as Virginia’s. She strolled through the palm tree forest and climbed up amongst the pillows, next to her hostess. It was wonderfully comfortable. Cornelia smiled shyly at Virginia and looked around the rest of the room. Even the walls were covered in white marble.

  “Do you like it?” Virginia asked enthusiastically. Cornelia nodded. “It took the workmen a few weeks to do it, but I’m so pleased with the results. It was modeled after a garden in a Moroccan palace that I stayed in with my sisters, a long time ago.”

  “It’s the most beautiful room I’ve ever seen,” said Cornelia.

  Virginia nodded. “Well, just wait. It’s not even done yet. I’m having a real fountain built in the middle of the room,” she said. “But we need new pipes in the floor to make it gurgle and run, and that’s going to take forever. I have a fountain ready to go, of course.” She pointed to a large marble object in the far corner.

  Cornelia thought for a seco
nd. “I have an idea,” she said. “Why don’t you make it into sort of a wishing well, with a filter instead of running water? And you can put fish in it. Big goldfish.” Even Cornelia was surprised to hear herself talking so much.

  “That’s not a bad idea,” Virginia replied. “And I love the idea of having big, fat orange goldfish in my fountain. Those dashes of bright color. You can see why the artist Matisse wanted to paint them all the time. What a lovely man. He painted a portrait of my mother as well, years and years ago.”

  Cornelia was very pleased that Virginia approved of her idea about the fountain. Emboldened, she asked, “Can I walk through the rest of the room?”

  “Of course!” Virginia exclaimed. “I want people to traipse around in it and enjoy it! That’s what all of the rooms in my home were designed for. Each room represents a different country where I have lived. Morocco, for example. And I have the most wonderful French drawing room—blue and gold and daintily upright. I also built a dark, grand English library. You can’t help but be smarter once you’ve spent time inside it. But my favorite room of all is my bedroom, modeled after a room in an Indian palace. It should be in a museum, if I do say so myself. Someday you can see all of them. But I’m afraid that I’m too weary to give you a tour today.

  “Cornelia, it’s nice to be back in New York,” she added. “Lovely to be home. I’ve been away for a very long time.” She sighed sadly.

  “My mother has been away for a very long time too,” answered Cornelia. She peered into the fountain. “And she is also always in different places. She’s a pianist and is always playing someplace that’s not New York.”

  A look of recognition came over Virginia’s face. “Ohhhh,” she said, as though she had solved a mystery. “Is your mother Lucille Englehart?”

  “Yes,” Cornelia said, sorry now that she had brought it up. It always made her testy when adults spoke reverently about Lucy.