The End of the Beginning

1994. It was a little over a year after we first started going out that Ann went off to China with her father. Ann's mother had died of breast cancer two years previously (at the age of 59) and Ann had become her father's traveling companion.

I saw them off at the airport, waving furiously as they passed through the security barrier. Ann kept poking her head back around the corner, grinning at me.

It was going to be a wrench. We hadn't been apart for more than a long weekend since the night of the uneaten lasagne. Now she was off for three and a half weeks. Still, I had their itinerary. I could follow her journey day-by-day as they toured around Cathay. I checked that itinerary each night when I went to bed.

About a week or so into their tour, before I switched off the bedroom light and fell asleep, I noticed that the following morning Ann was due to fly from Xian to Nanjing.

As I recall it now, I awoke already rigidly upright. It was morning and my clock-radio had turned itself on. The News. The announcer had said something about a 'plane, Xian, Nanjing. I waited, breathless. And then, there it was again: "... there has been a 'plane crash in Northern China. This morning's scheduled flight from Xian to Nanjing, carrying 178 passengers, is reported to have crashed shortly after take-off. There are said to be only two survivors..."

It was 48 hours before the embassy was able to tell us that Ann and her tour party had been on an earlier flight.

Something like that can concentrate the mind.

Two days later, I sent a telegram asking Ann to marry me. It read: "Missing you terribly - stop - Love you incredibly - stop - Marry me?.

A week or so afterwards, I was waiting for Ann to clear the baggage hall and customs, urgently scanning each trolley, suitcase, foot and face as they emerged sequentially from behind the wall. I had heard nothing from Ann since I had sent the telegram. I didn't even know whether or not it had reached her hotel before she had moved on to the next.

Is that her? Is that? That...? And, then, there she was. That snare drum kick to my diaphragm again. It was a moment before she saw me, penned behind the barriers. God, that smile. I moved parallel to her, unconsciously weaving between others still awaiting sight of their loved ones, my pace quickening with my pulse. And then there were no barriers.

Other members of Ann's family were there to pick up her father. I managed to bear the necessary exchanges: the greetings, the pleasantries and the partings. Eventually, we found ourselves standing alone in the middle of the busy airport - and then we were suddenly, strangely, awkward with one another.

After a moment or two, we started slowly for the exit. In complete silence we traversed the concourse, passed along corridors and negotiated ramps. I had left my ancient little car parked cheekily outside the Arrivals Terminal, it's top down. As it came in sight, I could stand to wait no longer. I stopped pushing the trolley.

"Listen... Did you happen to get...?"

She stopped me with a hand to my lips.

"Yes."

"You got it?" A smile and a nod. "The Telegram?"

"Yes." She stepped away from me, moving towards the car.

"Well?" I called after her, a little exasperated.

She turned, resting her bottom against the car's door.

"Well what?" She smiled mischievously.

"Will you...?" I stopped; the words wouldn't come.

"Will I what?" Her eyes flashed a challenge.

I threw my hands out, palms open.

"Will you fucking marry me?"

She pushed herself away from the car, put her hands behind my neck and kissed me. Softly.

"Yes, I fucking will," she whispered.



Here's a picture of Ann with her father from June 2004.