Fiction Writer's Workshop (27 page)

"Yes," said Bertha. And she moved noiselessly to a table opposite the drawing-room door and Eddie glided noiselessly after her. She picked up the little book and gave it to him; they had not made a sound.

While he looked it up she turned her head towards the hall. And she saw... Harry with Miss Fulton's coat in his arms and

Miss Fulton with her back turned to him and her head bent. He tossed the coat away, put his hands on her shoulders and turned her violently to him. His lips said: "I adore you," and Miss Fulton laid her moonbeam fingers on his cheeks and smiled her sleepy smile. Harry's nostrils quivered; his lips curled back in a hideous grin while he whispered. "Tomorrow," and with her eyelids Miss Fulton said: "Yes."

"Here it is," said Eddie. " Why Must it Always be Tomato Soup?' It's so
deeply
true, don't you feel? Tomato soup is so
dreadfully
eternal."

"If you prefer," said Harry's voice, very loud, from the hall. "I can phone you a cab to come to the door."

"Oh, no. It's not necessary," said Miss Fulton, and she came up to Bertha and gave her the slender fingers to hold.

"Good-bye. Thank you so much."

"Good-bye," said Bertha.

Miss Fulton held her hand a moment longer.

"Your lovely pear tree!" she murmured.

And then she was gone, with Eddie following, like the black cat following the grey cat.

"I'll shut up shop," said Harry, extravagantly cool and collected.

'Tour lovely pear tree—pear tree—pear tree!"

Bertha simply ran over to the long windows.

"Oh, what is going to happen now?" she cried.

But the pear tree was as lovely as ever and as full of flower and as still.

Dialogue dominates this story, but Mansfield keeps it under control. These characters are verbally dextrous people who use language to assert their membership in a hip, educated "modern" society. They use slang. They emphasize words for effect, as when Eddie Warren says, "And
in
the moonlight this
bizarre
figure with the
flattened
head
crouching
over the
lit-tle
wheel. . . ." Mansfield establishes Eddie's speech patterns so clearly with his monologue that his lines are rarely tagged in the rest of the story.

Of course, the reader is not supposed to see Bertha, Harry and the gang as educated and modern. To us, they are pretentious and foolish. Mansfield uses the dialogue to drive home this irony. We know almost

from the start that Bertha's bliss will come to a bad end. As these people gab away the evening, their silly patter is deepened, made resonant, by our knowledge that Bertha's bubble of self-satisfaction will soon burst.

Take a pen and mark or make a list of all the uses of repetition, interruption, misdirection and any of the other dialogue techniques we've discussed in this book. The key is to examine how a writer uses dialogue in a narrative from start to finish. Give it a try.