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Time to tell.
Prudence knows Gentle isn’t entirely what she looks like years before it is appropriate for her to know these things. She doesn’t make a habit of it, but watching the Crown Princess’ progress though school was somehow fascinating—the shifting, shrinking, expanding concentric circle of her social scene as rich and detailed as you might find in any anthropological study. The conclusion: that Gentle could turn a smile and attention to her own advantage like nobody’s business—even when, sadly, the business was everyone’s. This is why Prudence she doesn’t make a habit of it. She is a slanted, twisted sort of anthropologist but anthropologist all the same, and thinks it polite to curb her instinct to document. Besides, few people are actually polite to Gentle. Mannered is not the same thing.
It is easier for Prudence to take Ian at face value—which means it is, for a long time, hard to think of him as anything other than a moron. A nice moron. A puppy dog, a demented lemur. This image fades when she finds out that she, if she passes her exams, would be working under him. If he were really has awkward and obvious as he looked, she knows she would have been less surprised.
No, where Gentle plays coquette, he plays useless—where Gentle plays carefully busy, he is idle but harmlessly absent. She feels stupid, stupid and complacent, in her thirties, when she works out that Dr. Sagona changed from being a topic of half-hysterical nervous whispers in the schoolyard (she remembers all the girls who took to wearing heavy pants and jumpers, her own year of chemistry) to being quietly, easily removed from sight, mind –and, it was heard later, most civilian liberties—only after Ian’s year had gone through his class. No one made the connection at the time, and Prudence suspects she is the only one who feels idiotic for only making it so much later. At the time, Ian’s only claim to fame was that he was an easy hit for lunch money. He gave it away.
Prudence is never sure how to take Iolanthe. Prudence is not sureIolanthe knows how to take Iolanthe. She doesn’t understand how a girl who is perfectly happy to peer around Prudence’s defensive arm and declare her algebra, “just wrong, I’m afraid,” and yet is shy almost to the point of a stammer with other people. She doesn’t understand how, in the silly creative writing class they take in uni together on a whim, her own words can look so stilted and overlong on paper, but thrill in an almost colourfulway when read in Iolanthe’s voice. She doesn’t understand how, when she reads Iolanthe’s own sketches—written on a slant, pushed over with a bit of nonchalance, a lot of blush—she can almost taste purple and connect the sound of scissors in fabric (orange, never green) to an aria made of coconut and toast. Madness almost makes sense, or at least turns sane, when Iolanthe gets a-hold of it.
Prudence may turn into a confidential person, but that is just a bad pun. Confiding is nothing like it, and why anyone would be drawnto confide, drawn to her, is a mystery. She didn’t try to make Iolanthe trust her, though after friendship starts she does her bit to keep it.
Sometimes, over the years, the work of keeping a friendship is keeping quiet. It is a strain, sometimes, to be the friend who sympathises with the horrors of an impossible, controlling, frenetic mother, when another part of her can only see that same mother naked, which is embarrassing enough as it is. All Prudence can do is agree that Cassia St. James is hardly motherly, in an ideal sense, and be glad Iolanthe can’t quite read her mind. The fact that this torment persists for years just makes it worse. She takes solace in the imprudent, impossible nature of her desires, drinks a lot of coffee (which, along with Prudence, Cia would never touch) and allows herself to be distracted by Iolanthe’s musical costume designs, a severe haircut, and Mila Lucas, the summer between school and university. She prefers her extra classes after Mila finds Anna, and discovers she can be uncharitable when Mila swaps Anna for Matt.
Once she discovers how delighted Anna is with the new arrangement, Prudence discovers she can be as pissed off as all hell. What is the use of vindication if it’s casually rescinded? Iolanthe hugs her and she finds she enjoys the contact, when she might cause anyone else who tried to spontaneously combust. Then again, no one else is brave enough to try.
Ruby is brave enough to try anything, and Prudence wonders if this stems from being so conspicuously adored. It is hard not to adore Ruby, as beautiful as her mother—perhaps, chaotically even more so—with less of the former’s darkness (no, not just a penchant for black) and none of the stiffness. Though that, Prudence thinks as their acquaintance shifts, might just be an example of her cousin Gentle’s talent. She is mad and precise; calculating and completely unaware. Her brother is perhaps the only man Prudence would easily call beautiful, and for some reason he despises her less than Ian, which makes little sense considering Will is not the sort who takes kindly to anyone who considers sleeping with his sister—andIan is hardly inclined to do that! Prudence can’t help but think of it, particularly when she works out—watching, wanting, reflecting—that there is just as much to respect in Ruby as there is in her parents, just as there is in Gentle.
Sometimes, Prudence wonders if she is obsessed with the whole family.
Sometimes, though only after the fact, Prudence hates that Anna was catalyst for finally sleeping with Ruby. Only once (if you count in nights...) but it was right, and rewarding, and just fucking hot. Being consciously seduced, Prudence finds, is strangely compelling.
It is only afterwards, when she realises Anna is going to know every detail she can torment out of the other girl, that Prudence thinks she might have to break things.
Prudence is unused to glee. It’s a strange, particularly spontaneous sort of emotion that she feels she has read about or witnessed more than felt. An anthropological oddity. When she sees Pam, when she talks to her and watches this tiny, frail looking blonde practically dance around with excitement as she talks about strategy, of all things, Prudence can only think of glee when she realises the two of them will work together for a long, long time.
Prudence watches Sawyl. It is a frustrating business, because sometimes it seems like he’s more of an idiot than Ian and less of it is a fake. And for someone who can tie others in a classroom situation into ineluctable knots, the boy is dumb. Prudence watches Sawyl watch Pam, and wants to smack him on the upside of the head, whatever that means. She wants to smack him until the day Pam walks away from Anna, and then she thinks she might kiss him. For finally pulling his head out of his arse, Prudence thinks she might love Sawyl.
Prudence thinks Sawyl might hate her. Since she’d signed the papers, delivered the news, this makes sense. She feels old, under all that hate. Under other people’s tears. Old without the wisdom that might have told her she was really signing a death warrant. Prudence is only ever melodramatic when it counts. Either that or hit things, except she has no time for that. Prudence thinks she might have fallen in love with Pam, but she had never the time to check and now she’s dead and love might be grief, and what is the point offinally falling in love if it’s indistinguishable fromgrief, for fuck’s sake? She remembers a hen’s night, and one kiss. Just so they both knew for sure.
It would have been awful, Prudence knows, being in love with Pam. Not a good idea. Pam is married. Was married. There’s a baby. Classy devotion was her specialty. Being in love with Pam would be even worse than lusting after Iolanthe’s mother. But it would have been the decent thing, Prudence thinks, to at least make sure. Illegitimate feelings are real bastards. She tells Ian this and he sends her home.
By the time Iolanthe arrives with coffee, Prudence doesn’t care that it’s probably to check up on her. She knows that even if Ian or any of his lot broached that idea, Iolanthe would have been planning to turn up anyway. Prudence isn’t quite sure why this, finally, makes her cry.
Prudence often wonders why no one is in love with Iolanthe. She can seeexactly why someone would be in love with Iolanthe. Not naming names, of course. All is hypothetical. Prudence imagines someone—a tall someone, probably: Prudence’s mind refuses to settle on shape or gender, but they would probably be tall—smiling at her in Smith’s. They’d make her blush, probably confuse her, but she’d make sure the already-good coffee was fucking phenomenal. Iolanthe makes fucking phenomenal coffee. Prudence can’t remember the turning point in her life where she became incapable of living without it. Neither would the person who loved Iolanthe.
Prudence never does have the heart to tell her it was matte black. Somehow, it never matters. It would be very easy to love such as Iolanthe.