My Cousin Io | Ch 1-3 preview

Chapter 3

And I was right. Io's pursuit of the Reverend Thorsten was determined, blatant and subtle, if such a thing is possible. It was for her.

She started by smiling at him a lot and disconcerting him. Then she managed to get a conversation going with him about classical music, an interest it turned out that they both shared. After that it was easy. You could see how he looked at her.

He must have wondered what had hit him. For someone like Io to turn up in the parish and make a play for him, it was beyond belief.

For Juliet and I it was great entertainment. We had never witnessed anything like it before. So far we were the only ones aware of what was going on. I think at that stage, even we had told someone what she was up to, they wouldn't have believed us. A married man of the cloth with someone half his age? Hardly likely.

However my mother soon guessed something was up, what with Io dropping by the church all the time, and decided to accompany us to the next Sunday service. This didn't inhibit Io at all. Over the past fortnight she had established a firm public acquaintanceship with him.

But when she called him "vicar" to his face it was with a tiny smile that suggested she used a much more familiar term with him in private.

My mother sat through the service observing and afterwards said nothing. I could tell, however, that she thought that she needed to say something. She was just deciding what and when.

Whatever it was, I hoped it wouldn't cause Io to pack her bags and leave. We adored having her with us.

I was in the dining room trying to concentrate on some holiday homework when I finally overheard my mother bring up the subject with Io in the kitchen. Of course I listened in, because who wouldn't? It was far more interesting than Chaucer.

"Is it your ambition to become the wife of a divorced and likely defrocked vicar, Io?" my mother was saying. Her voice was light but I knew Io could read her true tone, just as I could.

Io was silent for a moment. I imagined that she was stirring her tea. "I can't say it's exactly my life's dream, Aunt Vee." She also spoke with a deliberate lightness.

It was always funny to hear her call my mother Aunt Vee. It was a reminder that her real name was Vere even though she always went by her middle name, Rose, to everyone outside the family. She had switched to Rose on marriage. My father occasionally called her Vere, but usually only "darling" or nothing at all. Most people called her Mrs Lawrence or far worse, "Mrs Doctor". We all winced at that.

One elderly stalwart of the parish had gone out of her way to discover my mother's full name, and then called her "Vera" in conversation. For some reason we all found that particularly ghastly. Even though it was only one syllable away from her actual name, it seemed a world away. Like Juliet and Julie. My mother simply couldn't bear for my sister to be called Julie or Jules. It made me wonder why she had chosen Juliet, but apparently she adored that name. The final syllable made all the difference to her.

On being addressed as Vera, my mother spoke with the intense politeness that increased in intensity the more furious she really was. "I am always called Rose, Mrs Buskin," she had said, and then turned away to emphasise the finality of this statement. Mrs Buskin had pursed her lips, but never again dared to refer to her as Vera.

My mother's tone with Io was similarly polite now. "Then I advise you to stop flirting with Simon Thorsten."

It startled me to hear her call him that. He was always "the vicar" or "Reverend Thorsten" to us. Calling him "Simon Thorsten" brought him down to earth and made him sound like just a regular human being. A man with a life and identity outside his vicarhood.