Is This a Time to Talk of Marriage?

For seven years now, Oliver has been proposing and Sylvia has been putting her decision off. It is a game they play. It is not a very enjoyable game. At least, not from Oliver’s perspective. Sylvia is wired somewhat differently. Sylvia finds the whole thing a tremendous lark. It wouldn’t feel like a weekend now, if Oliver didn’t, at some point, propose. He’s always asking for her hand. He has a knack for it. Sylvia actually thinks he’s improving with age. If she can continue to fend off his advances, by the time they reach retiring age, Oliver will be the best proposer this side of the Equator. Sylvia’s always telling her girlfriends to get themselves a beau like Oliver. Sometimes she evens considers lending him out to her girlfriends, so they too, can experience what it’s like to be properly proposed to.

Oliver asks gently, firmly, on bended knee, with flowers and chocolates and a string quarter, by the halfpenny bridge, in the forest, on the beach, in moonlight, sunlight and a torrential downpour, with growing fervour, with wilting enthusiasm, in Italian, (which is meant to be the language of love), all dressed up in a dickey bow, prostate at her feet. With all due urgency, Oliver continues to ask.

 Yet, Sylvia never fails to reply, “is this a time to talk of marriage?”

It is not a rhetorical question. Sylvia expects an answer.

“No,” he is forced Oliver admit, “it most certainly isn’t the time to talk of marriage, what with her sister expecting, and the situation in the Middle East only getting worse, and global warming, and Grandpa Collins just about hanging on, and the barley failed, and all the good lads gone to war, and Wall Street tottering, and the price of winter so much steeper than it was last year, not to mention the January sales. No,” he reluctantly concedes, “it is not a good time to talk of marriage.”

Oliver wonders if things might be different by next weekend. He remains hopeful, yet next weekend comes and goes and, though Oliver has done his duty and asked, Sylvia still refuses to give him a straight answer. It just isn’t cricket, the way she keeps stringing him on. All the fellas at the club have told him so.

“Stop proposing,” they say, “that girl’s never going to say yes, if you keep asking her every five minutes.”

Oliver wonders if there might be some truth in this. Perhaps next weekend, he will not propose. Though what on earth they’ll find to talk about for two whole days without a proposal to fill the silence he does not know. Oliver has a drink -a stiff drink- and follows it with six consecutive even stiffer drinks and determines to make it through an entire weekend without once proposing to Sylvia.

It is not easy, but he holds his nerve. He doesn’t even fold when the awkward silence stretches into its third hour and Sylvia sits there, glaring at him across the tennis court, looking for all the world like her late grandmother. It feels like a game to Oliver, this not-proposing malarkey. He wonders how long he can keep it up for. A month, possibly; maybe even longer. It does not feel like a game to Sylvia. She has become accustomed to being asked and as Sunday afternoon begins to drip down the back of the weekend, cannot bear the not-asking for a second longer.

Sylvia strides up to Oliver and looks him straight in the eye. She has a question for him. A question, he’s never been asked before. “Will you marry me?” she asks.

It is not a very satisfactory proposal. She hasn’t even gone down on one knee. Still, it is her first attempt. She will improve with practice.

Oliver looks her straight in the eye. He has been waiting for this moment for seven long years. “Oh Sylvia,” he says dismissively, “is this a time to talk of marriage? I daresay the dinner gong’s about to go. Ask me again when the moment’s right.”

Oliver smiles at Sylvia. It is a lot easier to smile on this side of the court. He likes it here. He may well grow accustomed to it.

Inspired by a line from Agatha Christie’s 1944 novel, Death Comes at the End