Grim Mortality

The last meeting between the two of them had been pathetic. They stood several years ago, like they did presently, face to face, by the banks of Lake Konstanz, the quivering pastel blue shimmer of its surface radiating outwards under an opulent golden sun. It was expected that he would propose. Her family expected that he would propose and talking of nothing else other than all the permutations under which a proposition could occur. Moss had not been privvy to the garrulity.  For Cicely, the image had been framed under numerous guises but always on this holiday and by this lake. The moment would be seized on by a man normally not apt to seizing anything. He would enrapture and enthrall with poetry and prose on bended knee with sweeping arms and operatic delivery. A box would miraculously appear, sometimes falling from the leaves of a nearby aspen and landing squarely into the hands of Moss and sometimes whisked from the depths of a very deep pocket, offered and opened  in front of an exasperated but expectant Cicely.

However, fate decided to cruelly cast a different net that day. Moss had recently been offered a post as principal violinist at the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and contrary to plans hitherto made by the two of them to up sticks and de-camp somewhere on the west coast of France Moss had taken the decision to remain for the foreeable future in Liverpool. The story was unwound in a short time in Moss's curious manner of speaking so quickly that the words toppled over each other, pausing only to emphasize the larger words, and generally emitting an incongrous high pitched hum at the end of a sentence to smoothen out any gaps in sound that he predicted may occur. Cicely assimilated his news politely, furtively grief stricken by its magnitude but outwardly emitting an agreeable almost cheery tone. Why anyone would choose Liverpool, plain grey Liverpool, with as many taxi cabs as gulls, was beyond her.