An unlikely marriage proposal on the ferry

It has been a stressful day. In fact, it has been a shitty month I would not wish on anyone. And, now that I think about it, half a year that I would quite happily hand back.

I rushed to catch the five o'clock ferry, breathless and fraying at the edges, trailing behind me the scattered debris of a day that had been all running and no arriving. A fridge delivery that wasn't coming, then was, then wasn't, then appeared at the last possible moment as if to prove that the universe has a sense of humour, even if you've temporarily lost yours. By the time I boarded, I was not so much a person but a slowly deflating object. I found my corner by the bar, sat down with a glass of water, and let the exhaustion finally move through me with a sense of relief. I had my island ahead of me, which can't be all bad.

And then he appeared.

Eccentric does not quite cover it. Round tinted glasses, this being a winter evening and the light already gone. A dandy's hat on. An air about him of someone who had decided long ago not to care about convention. I had recently met him, briefly, at a workshop on the island. He walked directly up to where I was melting quietly in my corner, looked at me with great interest, and said:

"So. You've got yourself in a corner there."

I considered this. "Yes," I said. "I have definitely done that."

"Do you want me to get you out of it?"

Now here is where a sensible person might have said, "thank you, I'm fine." But I was tired and the question landed somewhere true, so instead I said, "Do you mean that literally or metaphysically? Because if you have some superpower that could get me out of the situation I've got myself into, you have no idea how welcome that would be."

He looked pleased. He said he could help. But, he added, I would have to want to get out of the corner too.

I thought about this for a moment. The truth was, I didn't have the energy to want anything very much just then. I wanted to sit in my corner and let the ferry carry me home. I said something to that effect.

Then he looked at me carefully and said: "Marry me. I need a woman to love and look after."

Most proposals involve some build-up. A dinner. A ring. At a minimum, knowledge of each other's names. This one was offered like a perfectly reasonable solution to a logistical problem, sandwiched between existential corner analysis and what came next, which was a spirited attempt to guess my nationality.

He started, with some confidence, with Swedish.

I said no.

German?

No!

He worked his way through a number of northern European nations. He moved, bafflingly, to the United States. I steered him back toward Europe. He never made it to the Mediterranean. He was distracted, partway through his geographical survey, by the information that his car had been stolen recently. Left at the ferry terminal. Third car to be stolen, he mentioned, though he had recovered two. He was not particularly troubled by this because he had a campervan and did not worry much about where he slept.

Then he said: "Do you want to see my puppy?"

I said: what?

Follow me, he said. I followed him. He returned to his original seat and there, in a carrier beneath it, was the most improbably beautiful three-month-old, chocolate-coloured puppy, fast asleep, entirely unbothered by the whole situation. A new arrival, apparently, acquired that very day.

We talked a while longer, about belief and knowing, about corners and campervans and the general condition of being alive. He was, it turned out, a believer in a broad and unaffiliated sense, though he wore an improbably large cross around his neck. He believed in whatever I believed in, he said. I told him I wasn't much in the believing business; I was more interested in the knowing business, which is ongoing and frequently inconclusive.

As the ferry pulled into Waiheke, he asked if he could give me a hug. And it was a good hug. The kind that is neither too long nor too short, not too strong, nor too indifferently light, that simply acknowledges that you are there and that this has been an unusual and somehow necessary conversation.

They say you need five hugs a day for your emotional health. I got one, and it was enough.

As I turned around to collect my bike from the deck, he asked me to keep him on the list for future consideration, regarding the marriage proposal. I said I would be honoured.

I can't remember his name now. But he arrived at exactly the right moment, on exactly the right ferry, in a winter evening when I needed, above all, to laugh... and be hugged. The corner was still there waiting for me, of course. But it felt, for a little while, a bit more spacious.