finishing off that bit.
"Oh dear," he remarked, and sounded hilarious, a wizened old teenaged man who'd just had his first woman, "we've lost the pole. What are you laughing at?"
"We haven't lost the pole - I know exactly where's it's gone." I watched a pale colour mantle his cheekbones. He turned quickly, a paddle in one hand, setting the punt back upstream; we could see the pole, sticking out of the Cherwell like one of those old druid's stones one sees in places like Cornwall. "Rupert..."
"I'm not saying I'm sorry." His voice was muffled a bit, but I could still hear how fierce he sounded. "It wouldn't be true. I'm not at all sorry. It was absolutely splendid and I love you more than my own life and I'd do it again in one half a heartbeat."
"Well, I'm not doing it again in half a heartbeat, because I'm rather sore, actually. But I'm pleased you're not sorry because I'd hit you if you said you were. And I'm not sorry either. You might try asking me again in a few days time." He turned around and looked at me, standing precariously in the rocking punt with one hand on the pole, waiting in silence for what else I might choose to say.
"I've loved you since the first day I walked into the Carolan, and you took off your glasses, and didn't hide your eyes."
"Have you? Truly?"
"Truly. Even more than I've come to hate your father. Why do you think I stayed?"
- * *