Months later, the ring remains hidden in my bedside table. It has travelled in a suitcase, sat in my trouser pocket, been on a couple of trips abroad, hovered near my (hopefully) future mother-in-law, been so close to an announcement ... Yet the moment has not arrived.
This has nothing to do with doubts about the young lady in question. Indeed, affection aside, she is the only woman who I am neither incensed nor bored by (and when drama and dreariness leave the stage, I have found, life is that much more enjoyable).
But in the back of my mind, there has always been one lingering thought. By marrying this woman, I would be forsaking all other nether regions for the rest of my life. (After all, what is the point of marriage without fidelity?) Could I snag just one more good-hearted yoga instructor, able dominatrix or open-mouthed acting student before stepping into the breach? In practice, it doesn’t work that way. Once the decision is made, the interest in any other sex withers away.
In any case, turning 40 (two years from now) without a wife is just unseemly: not because being a middle-aged bachelor arouses suspicion in the same way that it used to, but because, as a woman once told me, men who live alone are scary and uncivilised. On principle, I am inclined to disagree, but the facts of prison, boarding school, barracks or City life would seem to confirm the point.
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After a few weeks of trying unsuccessfully to pop the question, I decided that a Saturday morning was the time to do the deed. That way, she wouldn’t be up all night, or distracted by work, and we could be together afterwards. This made logistical sense, but then it struck me that Saturday mornings were among our most pleasant and natural times together, and, as the weeks tumbled on, the last thing I wanted was to wreck that quiet magic. What if she started crying, or suggested some untoward exertions, or started expressing herself in some other, never-imagined form of female hysteria?
No, I should allow Cupid to strike as and when. I had bought the ring entirely on impulse, responding to aesthetics and a skilful saleswoman, rather than to being sensible, so I applied the same carefree attitude to asking. Again, there was trouble. Whenever it felt like the right moment, things would suddenly go wrong. Once, we were climbing a hill, and she asked if this was the spot where my brother had once proposed to his wife. As it happened, he almost had, and I sulked instead of proffering my affections. (It is one thing to follow your brother’s lead, quite another to have it pointed out minutes before the fact.) Other times, she managed to do something so minutely annoying that nobody else would have noticed, but which, to a man holding a ring, became the sort of evil you would have to live with for ever. People are people, of course, but to ask under such circumstances would render the moment peevish.
I started to wait for the moment when she finally cracked, saying: “Aren’t you ever going to ask?” Then I could go from peevish to angry and hurl the rock at her. But we don’t talk like that — at least, she doesn’t.
So, how to do it? I have found someone I want to be with, and we are willing to put up with one another. At least, I think we are. I won’t know for sure until I ask — and the publication of this story would suggest that my time is running out. Should I put the ring under her pillow? No, that is just stupid. How about in the fridge, on top of her computer, on the bathroom sink, in the small box of keepsakes she has on her bedside table, on her finger while she is sleeping, in the woods after a long walk, in front of a fire drinking cups of tea, at a restaurant in front of others (so mortifying), on an aeroplane if we ever get upgraded? In bed or at the kitchen table seems so ordinary; while we’re skydiving or skiing seems so American.
All I want is to be sorted — I want to be married, but the idea of getting married is horrifying to me. For years, I have attended friends’ weddings and making the small, mean point of not buying any presents. It isn’t just thoughtlessness, it’s that I really object to most unions I see — all these perfectly nice people setting out to make each other miserable. I keep silently imploring these brides and grooms not to throw their lives away. The fact that, years on, not a single one of my friends has yet filed for divorce would suggest not only that I was wrong and a bad judge of character, but that I am also a pretty bad judge of nuptials (and that I owe a lot of wedding presents).
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Still, the thought of walking down an aisle, of friends and family wishing me well, of declaring something as personal as love in front of people I avoid most of the time, fills me with dread. Perhaps we could pull a Ben and Jen, and have a quiet ceremony on a Caribbean island. But first I have to ask. And what if she says no? Do I have to go through this whole rigmarole again? That is simply unimaginable.