The Silver Age (Nicholson Gunn) by Nicholson Gunn

Author:Nicholson Gunn
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Hailsham Editions
Published: 2013-11-06T18:30:00+00:00

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His show’s opening was in full swing, the voices of the guests echoing off hardwood and exposed brick as they sipped champagne and jockeyed for conversational pre-eminence. Passersby on Queen Street had a full view of the yellow-lit enclave within which the event was taking place, through floor-to-ceiling front windows. Had he still been a newcomer to the city, Stephan would have felt nothing but annoyance walking past such a scene. Most likely he would have written it off as nothing but a bunch of unbearable phonies basking in their own self-described wonderfulness. But now, at the centre of something, he was content.

His parents had made the trip out from the suburbs, and he found that he was touched by their obvious pride in his success. (His father had even refrained from wearing his old Pepsi jacket, much to Stephan’s relief.) As promised, Pete and Sally had shown up, too. Pete gave Stephan a big whack on the back as his friend welcomed him, then announced that he was Stephan’s muse. (“Muses come in all sizes – and genders.”)

A young art critic from the Telegraph was also among the guests. Stephan took it as a good indication of his rising status, since the Telegraph’s space for arts coverage, let alone photography, had withered away in recent years, and the paper’s editors tended to reserve what space they had left for established names. She cornered him early in the evening for an impromptu interview, asking him about his influences and noting down his thoughts. She was quite cute, as it happened, and he found himself flirting with her a little.

And of course, colleagues from the photography and magazine trades had come to drink free alcohol and obscure their jealousy behind subtle digs at his talent (the ultimate compliment). From This City came Amanda, Carol and Nathan – the latter lightly buzzed on artisanal beers and in excellent form, reeling off scandalous anecdotes like a kind of hyper-erudite juke box. And a group from Bullmoose was on hand, including Anne Etherington and Joanne Hendry (despite the publication’s laddish content, it was staffed primarily by soft-spoken females). And Saul Lish, the gentle-hearted stunt journalist, fresh off a stint living in a shack in an infamous local shantytown and now writing up a memoir of the experience.

Of the photography crowd, Penny, of course, was there, wearing black eyeliner that matched that worn by her new beau, Clay. Bill showed up wearing a tuxedo-print T-shirt that did a surprisingly good job of covering his beer belly. He beamed like a proud father throughout the night, thrilled that his darkrooms had played a part in Stephan’s success.

The fashion photographer’s models Eliotte Chalmers, Martina Lubova and Adilene Watson also deigned to appear, but stood together in a corner and furiously turned up their noses at any male who approached within ten feet. And the war photographer Lucas Stull, though walking with a cane due to a gunshot wound in the thigh he’d recently received in the Korangal Valley.

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