How to Stay Married (6 page)

If you have a row with your husband or wife, and pack your bags, go to a discreet friend, never, never go home to your parents. You will say a lot of adverse things about your partner in the heat of the moment which you will forget afterwards, but your parents will remember them and it will be extremely difficult afterwards for your parents and partner to pick up the threads again.

FRIENDS

A friend married is a friend lost, goes the proverb, and certainly one of the sad facts of marriage is that it’s almost impossible to keep up with friends one’s other half doesn’t like. You can relegate them to lunch dates and evenings when your partner is out, but invariably they get the message and sweep off in low-gear dudgeon.

Much of the first year of marriage is spent weeding out the sheep from the goats. Both parties should try not to be jealous of the other half’s close friends. My husband certainly made short work of any friends he considered a) boring, b) unstable influences.

If you find your husband’s friends a bore, establish a reputation for delicacy early on in the marriage, then when they lurch in drunkenly from the pub, you can plead exhaustion and disappear upstairs to read a book.

DROPPERS-IN

Ought to be abolished. People should telephone first and see if you want to see them. No one will bother you the first month or so. They used to apologise to us for telephoning after seven o’clock, assuming we’d be in bed. After that they’ll descend in droves, looking curiously for signs of strain in your faces, avid to see what kind of mess you’ve made of your flat.

One method of getting rid of them is to dispatch your husband to the bedroom, rip off all your clothes, ruffle your hair, and, clad only in a face towel, answer the door brandishing the
Kama Sutra
. The droppers-in will be so embarrassed that they’ll apologise and make themselves scarce.

ENTERTAINING

ALWAYS CHECK WITH
your partner before you issue or accept an invitation, or you’ll get ghastly instances of double dating.

Time and again recently, we’ve been making tracks for bed when the telephone goes, and an irate voice says, ‘Aren’t you coming, we’re all waiting to go in to dinner.’ Or we’ll be just leaving the house to go out, when a rosy-cheeked couple arrive on the doorstep having driven fifty miles up from the country for dinner.

Keep a book by the telephone and write everything down.

DINNER PARTIES

Unless you’re a Cordon Bleu cook, and totally unflappable, your first dinner parties are bound to be packed with incident. Overcooked meat, undercooked potato salad, soufflés that don’t rise, guests that don’t rise to the occasion.

If you’re a beginner, cook as much as possible the day before. Cod’s roe pâté, liver pâté, soup, casseroles and most puddings can all be made beforehand. Then all you have to do the following day is to make the toast and mix a salad dressing.

If possible get the table ready the night before as well.

Polishing glasses, ironing napkins, getting out plates and coffee cups all take longer than one would imagine. Get plenty of cheese, in case you haven’t given people enough – I once fell up the stairs with the pudding and eight plates, and there was no cheese in the house.

Don’t spend hours away from your guests. Nothing is less calculated to put them at their ease than a hostess who turns up red in the face after three-quarters of an hour, grabs a quick drink and disappears again.

One couple we went to dinner with both dis-appeared for an hour to peel grapes for the Sole Véronique, and the whole meal was served to an accompaniment of piped cream.

Be careful who you ask with whom: the day our vicar’s wife came to dinner we invited a young man who regaled us for half the evening with details of the mating habits of the rhinoceros.

Don’t become a slave to social ping-pong. Entertaining is wildly expensive and just because you had caviar and three kinds of wine at the Thrust-Pointers, don’t feel you have to give them oysters and liqueurs when they come back to you.

If you’re broke, warn people beforehand that it will only be spaghetti and Spanish Burgundy, then they can either refuse, bring a bottle or have a number of stiff drinks beforehand.

If you’re worried about the food, drink for at least an hour and half before you eat, and they’ll be so tight they won’t know what they’re eating.

Equally, if you’re supremely confident about your food, don’t let them drink too much.

Don’t play loud background music before dinner, it kills conversation. People can go to a concert if they want that sort of thing.

Never, never show slides.

IF THEY WON’T GO

The husband should make the first move by saying his wife is tired and sending her to bed. If that doesn’t work, turn the central heating off.

If you don’t like certain people, don’t feel you have to ask them back. They’ll get the message eventually. Life is too short to bother with people you really don’t care for. You’ll work up too much angst beforehand about having to see them, and too much spleen afterwards about how bored you were.

PARTIES

Make a list and stick to it. We always ask indiscriminately and have far too many people, both of us trying to smuggle in people the other doesn’t like.

Don’t send out invitations. You can’t ask everyone, and people get very sour if they see your invitations on other people’s mantelpieces. Also, if you invite by telephone, you get a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ immediately, and people are notoriously bad at answering letters.

We once gave a drears’ sherry party – with fatal consequences. All our undreary friends found out and were furious they hadn’t been invited, and the drears discovered why they’d been asked, and were deeply offended. We were a bit short of friends that year.

One of the secrets of a good party is a few abrasive elements. Recently we went to an outstandingly successful ‘bring-an-enemy’ party.

Don’t expect to enjoy your own parties, except in retrospect. All your guests will be too busy getting
drunk
and trying to make other guests to bother about you. Your function is to act as unpaid waiter and waitress: effecting introductions, rescuing people whose eyes are beginning to glaze whether they’re bored or drunk, and watching people’s drinks.

Do mix a cocktail that can be poured, or give them wine, otherwise you’ll get in a terrible muddle remembering what everyone wants and start giving them whisky and tonic and gin and soda.

GOING TO PARTIES

Don’t stand together all evening, it will upset your hostess. Check every twenty minutes to ensure your partner isn’t standing alone, doesn’t need rescuing from the local bore, isn’t pinned to the wall by the local sex maniac.

If you want to dance cheek to cheek with the most attractive man/woman in the room, wait until your husband/wife is securely trapped on the sofa in another room.

If you catch your partner making a pass at someone, smile broadly as though it was an everyday occurrence, say, ‘Drink always takes him/her this way, he/she won’t remember a thing about it next morning,’ and whisk him/her away smartly.

HOW TO LEAVE

There is bound to be a moment when you want to go home and your husband doesn’t because he’s having too good a time, or vice versa. One of you will just have to grin and bear it. Don’t get into the habit of leaving independently, it looks bad, and is very expensive on taxis.

If you’re both bored, intimate to your hostess that you’ve been overcome by lust and must leave. She will think her party has been a contributing factor and be delighted, particularly if you leave murmuring about the seductive atmosphere.

OFFICE PARTIES

IF HUSBANDS AND
wives aren’t invited, be extremely careful. This is the moment when Mr Chalcott in Accounts, who has been eyeing Mrs Pointer in Personnel all the year, suddenly gets too much drink in him, makes a pass at her and the whole thing erupts into an affaire. Try not to get home too late, be careful to wipe lipstick off your cheek if you’re a man, and replace your make-up carefully if you’re a woman. The fact that Mr Prideau in Packaging saw fit to pounce on you may be just Christmas high spirits, but it will worry your husband, who’ll think it is normal procedure for the rest of the year.

If you go to your wife’s or husband’s office party, be
as
nice as possible to everyone. These people may seem draggy to you, but your partner’s got to put up with them all the year round, and will get tremendous kudos if you’re a success.

Be prepared for anything – my mother went to my father’s office party once when he was in a very senior position. She was hotly pursued by a man from the boiler division in a Mickey Mouse mask, who kept tracking her down in the Paul Jones, tossing her up in the air, and crying, ‘I am your demon lover.’

Be careful what you wear, look pretty but not out-rageous. When I was newly married, I went to the Author’s Ball at the Hilton in a party of my husband’s grandest business colleagues. Very brown from the South of France, I wore a white strapless dress which was so tight, I didn’t need a bra. The five-course dinner was too much for it. As I stood up to dance with one of the directors, it split, leaving me naked to the waist.