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.
The office
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.
OFFICE RELATIONSHIPS
A husband spends far more of his waking life with his secretary, and the people he works with, than with his wife. It is the same for his wife if she goes out to work. It is very easy to get crushes on people you work with. There’s natural proximity, there’s the charm of the clandestine (we mustn’t let anyone in the office know), of working together for a common purpose, and finally, because men basically like to boss, and women to be bossed, there is the fatal charm of the boss/female employee relationship. For if you are used to obeying a man when he says ‘take a letter’, or ‘make me a cup of coffee’, you may find it difficult to say no when he says ‘come to bed with me’.
Bear in mind before you either pounce, or accept the pounce across the desk, that people aren’t nearly so easy to live with as to work with, and you’d probably be bored to death with your boss or secretary if you had to spend twenty-four hours a day with them. It will also make things very awkward later if you go off them, while they still fancy you, or vice versa. You may be forced to leave a job you like.
Be very careful, too, not to let your husband or wife think that you are keen on someone in the office, or they will go through agonies of jealousy during the day, and raise hell every time you are kept late — even if you are working.
HAVING YOUR HUSBAND’S BOSS TO DINNER
The wife should pull out all the culinary stops and look as beautiful as possible.
But don’t flirt with your husband’s boss too much or you’ll have him sending your husband abroad and coming round on his own!
Invite another amusing but socially reliable couple to meet him. Then when you and your husband have to leave the room to dish up or pour drinks, he won’t be left alone to examine the damp patches or the peeling wallpaper.
Give him plenty to drink but not too much, or he may become indiscreet about company politics, regret it the next day and take against your husband.
General marital problems
COMMUNICATION
ONE OF THE beauties of marriage is that you always have someone to look after, and to look after you, to
