Etiquette for a Dinner Party

by Sue Orr

  That left just two chairs around the big, buffed mahogany dinner table to fill.

  The wife thought carefully about this during the following week. She knew very few people well enough to describe them as friends. Certainly not well enough to casually drop into the conversation, Oh, and by the way would you and your husband like to come over for a meal sometime? Or, we’re having a few people round on the fifth of August, how about you join us? Although she was aware that was how many dinner parties came about.

  In the end though, there was no decision to make. Much to the wife’s amazement and pleasure, a very suitable person presented herself as an obvious dinner party guest.

  The wife had an appointment with her doctor. The complaint was not a serious one; in fact she considered it embarrassingly trivial. She had, for no good reason at all, started crying. Just like that. One minute shopping, the next sobbing. She thought it was probably allergy-related, and that a pill would fix it.

  It surprised her when the doctor had different ideas. It could be stress, or even depression, the kindly GP said. Oh no, it can’t be that, replied the wife. I don’t get depressed.

  How is your family? asked the doctor. Your little girl? And at that, the wife cried.

  Would you like me to see her sometime? asked the doctor, watching the wife with keen eyes that knew what to look for.

  Oh yes. In fact, why don’t you and your husband come for dinner on August the fifth? the wife asked. The doctor replied that she would gladly come to dinner, and her husband, the school principal, would come too.

  How perfect said the wife. Company for the school teacher. .

  Deciding on a menu was not as difficult as the wife imagined it might be. She purchased several respected cookbooks and contemplated meal combinations. She even remembered that some people had dietary restrictions, so she rang each guest to check whether they might be vegetarians, vegans, averse to seafood, allergic to peanuts, almonds or kiwifruit.

  She told the bookkeeper to check these things with the guest from his firm, but the bookkeeper said he was far too busy with end of financial year accounts, and it would be best if the wife dealt with this dinner party business.

  She sensed he was no longer interested in the occasion — whenever she mentioned it he would sigh in an accusing way and change the subject. The wife was pleased, therefore, that she had already issued the invitations. It would be most incorrect of them to cancel, now that other people had reserved the date in their diaries.

  Dinner arrangements continued through the month of July while the bookkeeper added, subtracted and adjusted amortisation for goodwill. Each night he would take one break to eat a quick meal and put their daughter to bed. Together he and the child would stand in front of the heavy oak bookcase and the daughter would choose the book her father would read to her. The wife saw that the books were becoming longer, more complicated in plot and language. Her daughter was evidently a gifted listener, she thought proudly. That was, perhaps, what the school teacher wanted to discuss with her at the dinner party.

  As the fifth of August drew near, the bookkeeper’s piles of documents grew and grew, taking over the house entirely. The wife walked from room to room, staring in dismay at the total intrusion of other people’s fiscal positions into their home. Columns of black and red numbers swamped every horizontal surface. She did not dare move anything; she knew from previous attempts to tidy up that this was not a sensible thing to do. One person’s profit could become another’s burden, with disastrous outcomes for all.

  The wife saw that the bookkeeper was indeed under a great deal of pressure. So, one night, she offered to read to their daughter at bedtime.

  Immediately she saw what a serious miscalculation she had made. The bookkeeper was leading their daughter by the hand into her bedroom with Financial Accounting: A Decision-Making Approach, by Ling, Lembke and Smith, under his arm. He turned to her, his face ruby red in anger and perspiration oozing out of his high forehead. The veins on his neck bulged out so far she could see the tiny stress knots pulsing away.

  No, he said, almost raising his voice. This is just for us. Me and her. .

  The guests were due to arrive at six-thirty, but the wife knew it was considered polite to be a little early. The trouble was, she was not sure how early a little early was. She had been to the library to research dinner party etiquette, but this had not been particularly useful — the more books she read, the greater number of appropriate arrival times she found. So she set the table at four o’clock.

  The meal — a flavoursome casserole — was cooked and warm in the oven. Rice had been rinsed and was ready to steam. Entrees of little salmon mousses and dessert — Florida Key lime pie and cream — were in the fridge. Dinner would be served at seven; she expected the evening to draw to a close with dessert and coffee at about nine. Assuming, of course, that schedules were followed.

  A seating plan and running order for the evening was on the kitchen bench, next to stacks of baguettes and dinner rolls bought that morning from an artisan bakery in town. She had nibbled on one of these rolls while preparing dinner, and could not see what all the fuss was about. The crust was so hard her gums had bled. Perhaps that was why French women were so thin, she thought. She checked the sheet of paper again, to ensure everything was in order.

  At one end of the table would be the bookkeeper, at the other end herself. According to one theory, this would ensure that the two hosts would between them keep the bonhomie of the evening alive. The wife was not sure whether such a theory would apply in the case of her and the bookkeeper, but at least the guests would see that she had made the effort.

  This meant, of course, that she was unable to follow the accepted protocol of alternating males and females around the table, but she could not fathom how to satisfy the two rules when one had six dinner guests. Finally, she deemed it most important to keep a direct line of sight on the bookkeeper during the meal.

  So. Between them would sit (to her right) the bookkeeper’s senior, the school teacher and the principal. Then, to the right of the bookkeeper: the senior’s wife, the doctor and, finally, completing the circle, the policeman.

  The wife drifted through the dining room again and again, stopping now and then to adjust a knife, to wipe a spot off the table with the corner of her apron. Earlier she had felt nervous and exhausted, drained of the effervescence required to be a good hostess. But now she felt entirely differently about things, as though this lovely evening belonged to someone else and she was a mere observer of a social occasion, with all its rules and customs. According to one of the books — it might have been Margaret, Duchess of Argyll: My Dinner Party— a successful dinner party was ninety per cent dependent on good preparation. The wife was satisfied she had come close to, if not exceeded, this threshold of social adequacy.

  The guests arrived together, as it turned out, and being small-town people, they all knew each other. The wife was overwhelmed when they each presented her with a small gift. How kind! she said, and put the flowers and chocolates on the small wooden table that had been polished that day. The guests all kissed her on the cheek; the women barely brushing her skin so as not to leave lipstick marks. The bookkeeper finished some final paperwork for the evening, and joined them for introductions.

  The conversation flowed easily about the big round table. The wife functioned superbly, clearing dirty dishes as though by magic, replacing them with yet another delectable offering. The guests offered to help but no! she would exclaim, honestly, it’s no trouble at all, everything is under control.

  The wife watched her husband for uncomfortable lapses in conversation, but saw that he was surprisingly adept at the art of dinner party hosting. In fact, she found the man at the other end of the table — the bookkeeper she had been married to for twenty years — to be an entirely different person. He was a charming host, filling wine glasses, engaging in small talk on matters of curriculum (to his left) and health (to his right). The wife felt hungry for this pers
onality reserved for others. What a nice man he is when he needs to be, she thought.

  At eight-thirty, their daughter flew into the dining room, a whirlwind princess showing off her new dressing gown. Look at it! she sang, look! it has seagulls on it! The guests were delighted at the little girl’s loveliness and applauded her around, around, until she tumbled to the ground in a theatrical fall. Then she said good night to the guests, one by one, and when the teacher asked for a special cuddle, the little girl shuffled shyly around the table, brown hair hanging over her eyes, and wrapped her arms around the young woman. The bookkeeper excused himself to put his daughter to bed.

  One of the library books — Emily Post’s Etiquette, 2nd edition, possibly — had suggested Victorian parlour games as an appropriately light-hearted way to end a dinner party. The wife had prepared a list of such games and added it to her instructions on the kitchen bench. As she carried in a tray of coffee cups and chocolates, she made her announcement. Who remembers how to play Chinese Whispers?

  The guests exclaimed their surprise at such quaintness: Oh! how lovely! then delight as they moved in close around the table to close the gap left by the bookkeeper.

  Should we wait for him to return? asked the doctor. Oh no, replied the wife. He will be some time yet. Let’s get started.

  I will begin, she said.

  She leaned forward, her eyes shining bright, and whispered into the ear of the bookkeeper’s senior.

  The man did a terrible thing to the child. Pass it on.

  The bookkeeper’s senior looked at the hostess, the brain inside his big O-shaped head unable to comprehend what he had heard. Excuse me? he said, with a smile that looked as though it might drip off his chin at any moment.

  Come now, the wife replied, don’t tell me you don’t know the rules of this game.

  Then the senior nodded wisely, and leaned into the shoulder of the young school teacher.

  The man did a terrible thing to the child. Pass it on.

  The guests, one after another, frowned and glanced at the wife as they listened to the strange little sentence. And then, oh yes, Chinese Whispers! The relief at having misheard sent smiles skimming across their faces like stones across water. The message made its way slowly around the table.

  Finally, it was the turn of the doctor to whisper into the ear of the policeman. The policeman leaned forward in his chair to listen, as a constable on the beat might bend down to hear the words of a small child lost, looking for help.

  But before the doctor had a chance to pass the message on, the bookkeeper’s senior leapt to his feet. Oh my Lord! he said. Is that the time already? I’m so sorry to cut this lovely evening short, but we must be off! And the rest of the guests looked at their watches too, and expressed surprise at the late hour.

  They gathered their coats and jackets and scarves and gloves and gathered to kiss the wife on the cheek. It had been, the doctor said, a fabulous dinner party, and could the wife please pass on her thanks to the bookkeeper, who was obviously having trouble getting the little girl to sleep. And that next time the bookkeeper and the wife had to come to her home for dinner.

  The wife said that would be very nice — a lovely idea — but it would depend very much on whether the annual accounts had been dealt with, and whether they could find a suitable babysitter. She showed them to the door and bade them all a safe trip home and a good night’s sleep.

  HOW WOMEN BEHAVE

  WHEN MEN ARE LOSING

  THEIR WIVES

  Joe knocks on your door and tells you there is no more hope for Annie.

  So you hold him in your arms for as long as your heart will let you, and wait for the beginning of the grief. It comes fast and wet, but when you lift your face from his shoulder, he has not changed at all.

  Joe is not a handsome man. Garrulous eyes — real chatterboxes — but too close together. Sometimes, you think, they’re going to collide when his face folds in on itself in laughter.

  A scrum-weary nose, and a mouth that dances all over the show during the spinning of a good yarn. Usually it lands back above his chin, but not always.

  Not a perfect man, Joe, but a face to be trusted. A pot luck dinner that has turned out well.

  Annie is dying quickly. Of course, loitering has never been her way. She would tornado into a room, spin it crazy with tales needing passionate punctuation, and then be gone. You never quite understood the stories, but you wouldn’t miss them for the world. They were too exciting for endings and you had to make up your own.

  Now isn’t that a gift to treasure.

  Hope-generating ‘good days’ pass her by, and you are glad. They always turn out to be death taking a cruel break in its goosestep to the finish line. Her final two months will give her time only to plan her departure, then begin it.

  ‘I will be beautiful, when I’m laid out at home,’ she says.

  No church service for Annie — where would the many hundreds of mourners stand in a tiny church, she wants to know. No, the farewell will be of her own design; there will be wailing and weeping.

  People will gather, she says, on a cold rainy day at the beach. The theme will be misery. People will talk about her wonderful life — but mostly, they will dwell on their loss. Only her tiny daughter Skye will be excused. She may go swimming in her new dress, if she wants.

  Annie says when the talking is over, her violet and gold coffin will be passed down the line. Everyone will touch it.

  ‘You must cry.’ That’s what she says. .

  You visit Joe and Annie. Their home no longer belongs to them — it has been pitied into a strange place.

  Life and living have vacated the kitchen. No more dirty baking dishes. No more cookie cutters. No more crayons, paper dolls, apple cores, fairy wings. No more of Annie’s lovely projects, her making madness.

  Instead, there are cakes. Angel cakes, compassion cakes, morbid curiosity cakes. Hives of housewives, scared of scrambling their words, have turned to their mixing bowls. The cakes scream for Joe’s attention on that sparkling clean bench.

  You can hear those cakes, no mistaking what they are saying.

  ‘Look at me — I care about you more than she does.’

  Joe is there, awkward, like a buyer at an open home. You see layers start to fray. They are ready to peel back, underneath is the red raw grief.

  The changes begin. They are hardly visible at first. They start with his chin. Joe’s old chin was forever backing away from an argument. But stress draws it out. It is proud; not Supermanly, but nearly. Strong enough, now, to carry his burden.

  Does he notice, when he looks in the mirror? You suspect not. .

  Two weeks pass. You and Annie laugh and cry and argue and laugh. You are vicious about others — a luxury permitted in conversation with the dying.

  You giggle about the sparkling kitchen, the vacuumed floors, the cake stall. Heads buried under her duvet, in case one of the cleaning maggots squirm in. You remember her infidelities. Not the names, they never mattered; just the pick-up lines. Annie’s, not the men’s.

  She makes you promise never to tell Joe, never to ruin his perfect memories, and you promise.

  One time, she sends you out to find what colour the floor tiles are — she’s forgotten. She won’t let you back until you drop something on them, dirty them again.

  Joe isn’t around and you are glad, you want her to yourself. .

  A few days later, you see Joe, you nearly don’t know him. His beauty is shocking.

  All his features are on the move; mobilised by the distortion of life around him. His cheeks are gaunt and defined, no longer man-next-door. Unshaven, honest. His mouth says vulnerable and fragile, no matter what words are spoken.

  The other women notice. They cannot stay away from him; they hold his hand, they touch him, rub against him; they hug and wrap themselves around him, drawing him in.

  They say they are supporting him — they are lying. His trauma has turned him beautiful: nerve ends exposed and sparking.
They are wanting him. Just plain wanting him.

  They speak quietly to him, drawing him aside for a private audience. Always touching. When they are ready to leave, after a hard day of longing, they turn to him for one last embrace. Joe holds each of them close, saying goodbye.

  Is he fooled into thinking he is receiving, not giving? He is praying for one more day of Annie. The women are praying for more of Joe.

  Annie has noticed, how could she not. You, Annie and Joe are in the bedroom and she is screaming. Taunting him. ‘You’re loving this, you bastard … sick bitches all over you …’

  Joe stands there hurting, crying, no idea what she means.

  But you know.

  And where are the men? He might be thinking about that, wondering where his friends are. But it’s just as well, isn’t it, that they stay away. They would not want to see their wives burn. .

  She isn’t easy to be with, now that the end is close. You feel her soul has already departed. Her friends say their goodbyes — even the bakers down tools, face their fears and spent time with her.

  It is so hard for them to give her a kiss and simply say bye. Embarrassed by finality, they cannot resist addenda … I’ll pop back … The farewells are absurd; they will start over tomorrow.

  Her physical self catches up with her soul on July twenty-eight, and the timing is perfect. Joe is at the peak of his beauty and cold rain is forecast for days to come.

  Joe drifts through the hell protected by his beautiful shell. The women are beside themselves. They ache and cry for him, not Annie. But they have to back off, don’t they. It is time, finally, for husbands to step forward, lock hands and murmur their discomfort. And wonder when they might get their wives back.

  In the days to follow, his beauty is intact and the foolish women stay close. Joe is a carapace; content to be handled, passed around. But he has given them the slip.

  You know that he is with Annie, but you will wait.

  Then he comes back. His beauty collapses, one stunning feature after another, until he looks like Joe again. And every day there are fewer visitors, fewer cakes.