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.Maybe I only stopped for a few minutes, they had to send someone back for me, I don’t know how long I looked at it.But I could see my mother in the Diana figure, the way she held herself with such disinterested aplomb, such gravity.And afterwards, when I read up on the background, the painting seemed more than ever to be about what can happen between men and women, when they stumble on some terrible revelation about the other.I could see the story of my mother and father in Titian’s painting, you said.But it was your mother who suffered most, not your father, I said.How do you know? you said.Who are you to say who suffered most? I prefer to think of her as being empowered by her death.Like Diana, unleashing the invisible arrow.The Death of Actaeon means something to me, Angel, but all it is to you is a talking-point, a conversation piece.And you carry a picture of it around in your head for years, you weigh its pros and cons, never arriving at any conclusions.You’re very good at pictures, Angel, you picture this, you picture that, but it really hasn’t much to do with the real world, has it? Art, for you, is a little safe haven.Like your father’s beloved Esperanto, a cosy little back room where a dozen or so oddballs talk about changing the world, when they all know the whole thing was doomed to failure about fifty years ago, it’s all cloud-cuckoo-land.Don’t you think you’re like that, Angel, like your holier-than-thou father, ever so slightly pompous, with your useless pictures of the world? you said, and I was taken aback that you should speak of my father in this way.And you, I suppose you’re going to change the world? I said.Nobody changes the world, you said, history isn’t a matter of personalities, of kings and statesmen making the big decisions, history’s the manufacture of consent.That’s what MO2 does, we’re in the Chinese whispers game.But at least I’ve no illusions about it.I consent to it.And I take pleasure in what I do, because I like to create beautiful things, you said.Isn’t that what I do? I said.No, you said, you think your pleasure is morality, you think you’re better than the next person because you can appreciate something they can’t.And you’ve made a picture of me, Angel, you carry it around in your mind like an icon, and for all I know you might adore it, but it’s the wrong picture, Gabriel, it’s not me.It’s a kind of fake, you said, and I’m tired of tramping around galleries looking at pictures with you, be they real or fake, and with that you turned on your heel and left.We made it up a little afterwards, when I came back to the hotel room and found you were wearing L’Heure Bleue, as if to remind me of our time in Paris, or to remind yourself of our time in Paris.But it began again in Belfast, or rather it ended in Belfast.We’d gone out for dinner, to Restaurant 77, the best restaurant in town, it was your idea.The condemned man’s last meal.Afterwards, we were, as I thought, about to get a taxi to your place when you said, I think we should stop seeing each other for a while.What do you mean, stop seeing each other? I said.It was a circumstance I had never envisaged.Oh, I knew we had had our difficulties, but they consisted of mere ideological differences, easily resolved, and this struck me like a bolt from the blue.You were silent for a moment.What do you mean, stop seeing each other? I said again, less confidently this time.Yes, Angel, maybe if we stop seeing each other we’ll learn to see each other better.We both need a little time and space away from each other, you said.I felt as if my world had turned upside down.You can’t mean it, Nina, I said.You mean everything to me, I said.I can’t live without you, I said.How can you say that, I said, after all we’ve done together, after all we’ve said to each other, you said you loved me, I said.We say a lot of things, Angel, and they’re true for when we say them, but things change, you said.But it’s not over, is it, Nina? It can’t be over, you’ll come back to me, won’t you? Give me some hope that you’ll come back, Nina, I said.Oh, Angel, I don’t know my own mind at the moment, I live in hope as much as you, don’t press me too hard, you said.And I said more, and you said more, and I could not change your mind.I have to leave now, you said.You’ll be in touch? I said.I’ll write, you said.You kissed me gently on the cheek, and left me.When I woke the next morning I thought it had all been a bad dream, and when I realised you had indeed said what you said, I felt bereaved.I had not felt like this since the death of my mother, nor would I feel like that again until the death of my father.And, remembering that time, I am writing now with a funereal black Waverley pen made in the 1920s, whose unusual spear-shaped nib has a teardrop vent-hole
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