self-control to avoid a beer belly.
Back in 1969, of course, men were expected to be masterful: ‘If a man is married to a slut,’ I pronounced fiercely, he must remonstrate with her, adding that ‘women like a firm hand.’
‘They’d probably prefer a farm hand,’ observed Leo, when he read that bit.
My recommendations were all so dogmatic. One moment I was warning wives at the pain of divorce not to run out of toothpaste or loo paper, the next telling them how to detect if their husband was having an affair: ‘If you both come home from work and the cat isn’t hungry.’ There was hardly anything about wives pursuing a career. If she needed a little money, I suggested, why not make paper flowers, or frame pictures?
Oh dear, oh dear. In mitigation, I suppose I was writing in a different age, when women’s lib had hardly been heard of. No one had dreamed up New Men or paternity leave, and two-career marriages were a rarity, particularly if the couple had children. My own youthful ambition had been to marry a man I’d fallen madly in love with, who’d whisk me away from the squalor of the typing pool. My role model was my beautiful mother, who looked after my father and us children so well because she never went out to work. My father, the breadwinner, because he called the shots, was surreptitiously nicknamed ‘Monsieur Bossy’ by my brother and me.
And yet despite the arrogance and the bossiness, I think there is good sense in much of How to Stay Married . What, I wonder, is the secret of a good marriage? Separate towns if you both snore, goes the old joke. Separate razors certainly. Today, probably separate remote controls.
My secret was to marry a really sweet man, who as I said back in 1969, had been married before. Thus after a cataclysmic row when I was tearfully packing my bags, he would reassure me that such tempests were normal in marriage and would blow over. Then he would make me laugh by saying we mustn’t let Michael, our black cat, be the victim of a broken home.
Throughout our marriage he’s constantly been funny.
‘What does Jilly wear in bed?’ asked one journalist, to which Leo replied, ‘Dogs mostly,’ and that when he reached over in the night for something furry, he would often get bitten.
Marriage, I’ve always believed, is kept alive by bed-springs creaking as much from helpless laughter as from sex. On our honeymoon we passed a large sign saying: ‘Bear left for Norwich’, and had this vision of some purposeful grizzly setting out on his travels. Soon the bear had spawned a whole family of other imaginary bears, about whom we made up silly private jokes and talked through them, as we always talk through our animals:
‘You love that dog more than me,’ Leo will say.
‘I don’t, I don’t, he’s just nicer to me sometimes.’
When we had been married forty years, in 2001, although reeling from the hammer blow of Leo being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, we celebrated our ruby wedding with a very jolly party. In a speech, displaying far more humility than I ever did in How to Stay Married , I compared marriage to two people rowing across a vast ocean in a tiny boat, sometimes revelling in blue skies and lovely sunsets, sometimes rocked by storms so violent we’d nearly capsized, but somehow we’d battled on.
So many people gave us red or crimson roses, that we made a special ruby wedding flower bed in our garden. Ten years later as our golden wedding draws near, the roses are blooming, if a little battered, and the bed is invaded by wild flowers, happily including speedwell.
We have now reached a stage in our marriage when we worry much less about screwing than unscrewing the top on the Sancerre bottle or the glucosamine pills. We are utterly defeated by technology, but one of the plusses of six gorgeous grandchildren is they can turn on the DVD, use Google, send emails, change channels on wireless and television and record programmes for us.
Several hours
Back in 1969, of course, men were expected to be masterful: ‘If a man is married to a slut,’ I pronounced fiercely, he must remonstrate with her, adding that ‘women like a firm hand.’
‘They’d probably prefer a farm hand,’ observed Leo, when he read that bit.
My recommendations were all so dogmatic. One moment I was warning wives at the pain of divorce not to run out of toothpaste or loo paper, the next telling them how to detect if their husband was having an affair: ‘If you both come home from work and the cat isn’t hungry.’ There was hardly anything about wives pursuing a career. If she needed a little money, I suggested, why not make paper flowers, or frame pictures?
Oh dear, oh dear. In mitigation, I suppose I was writing in a different age, when women’s lib had hardly been heard of. No one had dreamed up New Men or paternity leave, and two-career marriages were a rarity, particularly if the couple had children. My own youthful ambition had been to marry a man I’d fallen madly in love with, who’d whisk me away from the squalor of the typing pool. My role model was my beautiful mother, who looked after my father and us children so well because she never went out to work. My father, the breadwinner, because he called the shots, was surreptitiously nicknamed ‘Monsieur Bossy’ by my brother and me.
And yet despite the arrogance and the bossiness, I think there is good sense in much of How to Stay Married . What, I wonder, is the secret of a good marriage? Separate towns if you both snore, goes the old joke. Separate razors certainly. Today, probably separate remote controls.
My secret was to marry a really sweet man, who as I said back in 1969, had been married before. Thus after a cataclysmic row when I was tearfully packing my bags, he would reassure me that such tempests were normal in marriage and would blow over. Then he would make me laugh by saying we mustn’t let Michael, our black cat, be the victim of a broken home.
Throughout our marriage he’s constantly been funny.
‘What does Jilly wear in bed?’ asked one journalist, to which Leo replied, ‘Dogs mostly,’ and that when he reached over in the night for something furry, he would often get bitten.
Marriage, I’ve always believed, is kept alive by bed-springs creaking as much from helpless laughter as from sex. On our honeymoon we passed a large sign saying: ‘Bear left for Norwich’, and had this vision of some purposeful grizzly setting out on his travels. Soon the bear had spawned a whole family of other imaginary bears, about whom we made up silly private jokes and talked through them, as we always talk through our animals:
‘You love that dog more than me,’ Leo will say.
‘I don’t, I don’t, he’s just nicer to me sometimes.’
When we had been married forty years, in 2001, although reeling from the hammer blow of Leo being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, we celebrated our ruby wedding with a very jolly party. In a speech, displaying far more humility than I ever did in How to Stay Married , I compared marriage to two people rowing across a vast ocean in a tiny boat, sometimes revelling in blue skies and lovely sunsets, sometimes rocked by storms so violent we’d nearly capsized, but somehow we’d battled on.
So many people gave us red or crimson roses, that we made a special ruby wedding flower bed in our garden. Ten years later as our golden wedding draws near, the roses are blooming, if a little battered, and the bed is invaded by wild flowers, happily including speedwell.
We have now reached a stage in our marriage when we worry much less about screwing than unscrewing the top on the Sancerre bottle or the glucosamine pills. We are utterly defeated by technology, but one of the plusses of six gorgeous grandchildren is they can turn on the DVD, use Google, send emails, change channels on wireless and television and record programmes for us.
Several hours
Similar Books
Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History
Ken Liu, Tananarive Due, Victor LaValle, Nnedi Okorafor, Sofia Samatar, Sabrina Vourvoulias, Thoraiya Dyer
