Half Decent Proposal: Part Two
Read part one of Tim’s proposal story here.
After the New York planetarium show we had a browse around the other exhibits. The staff of the Natural History Museum had wilfully continued with their misguided notion of introducing concepts of natural history. Very little airy poetry on how pretty things are. I had to get us away from its’ passion killing scientific rigour.
But first, my phone rang. Hannah had said, after many evenings in front of Masterchef, how much she’d like to go to a Michelin starred restaurant, so I’d booked one with two of the blighters. I had told the restaurant I would be proposing and this would, all being well, be an engagement dinner. They were calling to ask when I wanted the congratulations desert. I didn’t know what they were on about, and felt very much like a dumb limey out of my depth in every possible way. They carefully explained this was, predictably, a desert that would say “congratulations,” on it, and they’d throw it in for free but didn’t want to bring it out before I’d popped the question. I confirmed I would be asking for her hand before we arrived, which somehow increased my worry.
For the first time the risk of her saying no seemed a possibility. A whole restaurant had put their faith in me. A chef was making a congratulations desert, no less, at that very moment. What could be done if Hannah said no? On top of the crushing disappointment of rejection, I’d have to tell a chef to bin his congratulations desert. As if I needed more pressure, the happiness of a pastry chef was now also in my hands.
I tried to swallow my anxiety (maybe they could change it to a “take as much time as you need to think about it,” desert?) and led Hannah across the street into the great swath of green that is Central Park. I’d done my homework and used a combination of travel guides and advice from the TripAdvisor forums to devise the most romantic walk through the park. We took in the most picturesque spots from Balcony Bridge and the Shakespeare Garden, with its’ statue of Romeo and Juliet, to Belvedere Castle and the wilder, unkempt beauty of The Ramble. Despite my best efforts, Hannah was most charmed by a family of birds having a splash about in a puddle.
My first option for the proposal was atop Belvedere Castle, the second highest place in the park, for a fairy tale setting, with the glorious park and the skyscrapers of Manhattan laid out before us. Hannah, entirely reasonably, didn’t fancy climbing all the way up there. In fact she was asking how much longer we were going to walk around and whether we could get a drink somewhere or go back to our apartment for a bit. And here is a central difficulty with proposals – if you’ve kept everything secret your beloved has no idea what you’re up to and therefore, through no fault of her own, doesn’t necessarily help the day progress as you’d planned. A friend of mine had found a perfect spot to propose in a London park but couldn’t convince his tired girlfriend to venture out of the flat. In the end he proposed, successfully, while she was doing the washing up.
The ring was another worry. I had brought a ring but not THE ring. THE ring had belonged to Hannah’s grandmother and she had often said she would like it as an engagement ring (those little hints didn’t go unnoticed). I had decided not to risk losing a family heirloom with such sentimental value by trying to get it safely on a transatlantic flight and through two lots of airport security without Hannah finding out. But now, when the moment had come, I realised the only thing Hannah had ever said she wanted from a proposal was that ring. And I didn’t have it.
I convinced Hannah to take a stroll through my second potential spot, The Ramble, and found a secluded bench. By now my head was swimming with self doubt and disappointment. I felt a failure and considered aborting the proposal, to try again another time. But we had come all the way to New York. I had reservations at a Michelin starred restaurant. There was a congratulations desert being made.
Weighed down by anxiety, I roused all the courage I had left. I told her that she was the most amazing person I had ever met, that I loved her more than I ever thought possible and wanted to be with her for the rest of my life. That looks quite good in print but it was delivered with, at best, Huge Grant style stuttering charm and, at worst, the resigned, miserable tones of a man who felt he’d messed up the whole thing. I’m not sure how much of it Hannah actually heard properly but I made my meaning clear when I got down on one knee and produced the stupid temporary ring.
Tune in next week to find out what happened to the congratulations dessert in Part Three: The As Yet Untitled Final Instalment.
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