‘She’s got quite small fingers,’ I told the woman in the jewellery shop, nervously. ‘Because she’s only 14.’ She nearly dropped the tray of engagement rings. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, ‘I make inappropriate jokes when I’m nervous.’ This jewellery shop felt so foreign to me. I was trapped in a terrifying rite of passage, one of those beautiful moments that I always seem to cock up.
Carats? Clarity? Points? Shopping for an engagement ring had its own baffling language. All I wanted was a handsome rock so my girlfriend, Claire, could become my wife. Regular readers will have followed our relationship from day one, and watched us embarrassingly fall in love in monthly instalments.
A work trip the week previously meant we were apart for a weekend and, alone in bed, I imagined not spending the rest of my life with Claire, the first girl to double as my best friend.
‘If only there was a contract we could sign,’ I thought, ‘that made us agree to feel like this about each other, forever.’ And then the penny dropped. ‘If you like it,’ as Beyoncé famously advised, ‘then you should put a ring on it’. But how could I, a bumbling idiot, pull off a romantic proposal? And would she even say yes?
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When blokes are faced with emotional turmoil, we turn to rules and regulations, seeking solace in tradition. ‘An engagement ring should cost a month’s wages,’ the internet told me. Christ, is that pre-tax? I asked my friend, Chris, who admitted, ‘Mine cost seven, but I knocked the jeweller down to six-eight.’ I thought £700 was affordable until Chris explained he was talking in the thousands.
‘I organised a private dinner on the roof of a posh hotel in Florence,’ another pal told me. ‘It took five staff to hoist a table up there. But then they gave me the bill - I’m still paying for it three years later.’ I realised I didn’t have the cash or the imagination for this kind of caper.
‘The prospective groom must seek permission of the bride-to-be’s father,’ explained another website, and this felt right. But getting Claire’s dad alone was a nightmare. I drove 60 miles to his place and finally popped the question to Dad at the side of an Under 11 football match starring Claire’s brother. I was shitting it. Did I have to get down on one knee here, too? In the mud? Luckily, he said yes over a bacon sandwich!
The next week, I was sent to LA with work and decided this time I couldn’t leave Claire behind. So I paid to fly her out days later, to meet me ‘for dinner’ and a couple of days in the sun. Claire innocently got off the plane and we drove towards a restaurant in Malibu, overlooking the sea. Snaking north along the Pacific Coast Highway, the hot city became sun-kissed beaches. JFK began his affair with Marilyn Monroe at the very restaurant at which we arrived. I hoped this affair would have a happier ending.
The California State Route 1. It is known to locals as simply ‘The One’.
I remember thinking that I wouldn’t trust the waiter with the ring but, after a week of trying to hide it from Claire at home, I was glad to get rid of the bloody thing. ‘We know what to do,’ smiled the waiter with a wink, as I gave him a $50 tip and the tiny box. It had all been arranged.
‘Are you OK?’ Claire asked, as I picked at the best seafood ever to have been put in front of me. My stomach was knotted. Claire was talking about the future and ‘us’, and I was certain she was onto me. The only thing that kept me calm was this 18-carat feeling that we were made for each other. When the waiter brought the dessert over, the ring was placed beside it, covered in rose petals. Claire didn’t notice at first, impressed as always by a good dessert. Suddenly, her fork froze above the vanilla crème brulée, her eyes wet and sparkly as I fluffed my lines.
The ring was absolutely awesome, (and I was by now an amateur geologist). It cost exactly one month’s wages, pre-tax. White gold was, as the jeweller reluctantly agreed, a bit like white chocolate: ‘different’. ‘Will you be my wife?’ I asked.
But, in all the fuss and the tears and the photographs, Claire didn’t give me an answer until we left the restaurant to a round of applause and a sea of smiles.The hired car swung onto the freeway, the most beautiful 655-mile stretch of coast in the world, and the most perfect of settings: The California State Route 1. It is known to locals as simply ‘The One’. And on it, she said ‘yes’.
By Jeff Maysh