If you study the exhibition catalogue — if you look at Monk’s Yard, that is, and study the upsweep and the blackness of the crossbeams — then you might feel as though you can sense some kind of immanence. The photographs, most of them, are angled, just as though the buildings are beginning their ascent. They’re all in black and white; they have a sombreness, a solemnity, which makes you feel that this is the sort of place where great art should have been created.  

           

But it didn’t feel that way at the time. In Frankie’s shop, light dribbled down the window pane. The yard itself was sepia. You came around the corner and, if you hadn’t been there before, the shop’s awning and striped blind seemed vivid and desperate as a flare. Queeny, his wife, kept pansies in a window box. She “manned” the shop; this was a local joke, a sort of homage to the way she glowered at you from behind the till. Frankie and Queeny were the embodiment, it seemed, of what was more a piece of local folklore than a joke: the woman, big as a blown-up ball, who kept her husband in the same way that you’d keep a ferret or a dog. Frankie was only five foot four. He made nervous gestures, little stabs and feints, like he was directing the air around him. This morning, in the studio, his face was deadpan.

​

“Try to relax,” he said.

​

Harry was standing to attention. Now that he was in the camera’s eye he looked as if he was frozen into the kind of gesture that a statue makes, a sternly benevolent blessing or angry warning. Frankie, impatient, tugged at him. He pulled his cap so that the right side touched his ear. He threw a ticket machine into his hands. 

​

“Coo. Where did you get that from?”

​

Frankie ignored him; stared at him, spat on a handkerchief then worried at his badge. Harry made to move backwards.

​

“Leave off, will you?”

​

He shrugged his shoulders.

​

“It’s only for the missus.”

​

But, of course, this wasn’t true. Nobody, Frankie knew, was ever entirely impervious to the power of the lens. Later, in the darkroom, there he was: Harry. Wooden; on his dignity; half-drunk (Frankie left these in a drawer) and then — these two — the Harry that Harry would have wished the world to see. Frankie’s presence, the camera that had seemed to want to nuzzle him, had made him gather the ticket machine into his chest. He had a look of mildly affronted rectitude; he looked the type for whom it was important that he get you safely home. When he came in he held the photo, sheepishly, between his thumb and forefinger. He lifted it to the light and tilted it from right to left and back again.

 

At last, he said, “’as it.”

​

He nodded.

​

“’as me.”

​

He made a grab for Frankie’s hand. His huge paw next to Frankie’s delicate, tapered fingers was like an illustration of their relative sensibilities. Frankie had the cockiness and breeding of a court photographer. He said that you had to be a mind reader but, really, it wasn’t hard. Mothers wanted to look maternal; builders swaggered through the door; bookies and publicans all worked at being convivial. Mods — it was the time of mods — wanted a blend of masculinity and something else: a surliness but also a languid and free-floating grace. Frankie gave people what they wanted. He coaxed it out of them. He seemed, sometimes, to be caressing them. He made a good living at it, too.

​

Until Diane came in. It was a spring day but the yard was grey and wet. Her raincoat was bright pink and she had modish batwing eyelashes — two lines of exclamation marks. She pointed to the blinds that led into the back.

​

“He in?”

​

Her hands, after all that, were a bit of a shock. The hair; the raincoat; her bare knees — all told you that she was a typical London girl; a clerk, say, or a secretary. But her fingers were stubby and grimy. Greasy, even. Queeny looked her up and down. Diane began to speak but, at that moment, Frankie wandered in. He was studying an advert, a woman who, in her fur coat and chalky lipstick, might just as well have been one of the bottles of perfume (“Joy!”) that were advertised out in the yard and in the streets beyond. She looked expensive, which was the last thing that Diane was.

 

She said, “You free?”

​

Frankie looked at her for a moment. He seemed to see something; some splash of light. He nodded, almost to himself, and grinned. To Queeny he said, “Alright?”

​

“You only ‘ave ‘alf an hour.”

​

“Okey-doke.”

​

He went dancing round her, plucking a packet of fags from behind the till in the same way that a magician might produce a bunch of flowers. This jauntiness, too, was part of local (indeed, of national) myth; one recognised and felt a certain comfort in the presence of someone cheeky enough to guy — to float around — the battle-axe that he had married, seemingly inadvertently. It was Diane’s turn to grin. In the studio, she sat on the stool provided for her. 

​

“It’s for my mum,” she said.

​

Her hands hung awkwardly between her knees. She was… what? Frankie studied her. 19? 20? She rubbed her nose. Below her miniskirt, her knees were red. She was smiling, though. She nodded at Frankie’s camera.

​

“She says you’re good. She says that you’ll make me look bee-yoo-ti-fall.”

​

She did a daffy pout and flounced her shoulders so that her hair fell down behind them. Frankie smiled. He lit a cigarette. She seemed to dance, just for a moment, in a heady gauze. He bent expectantly then fired off a round of shots. He tried, he really did. He came so close that he could feel her breaths, short rapid puffs, against his skin. He made her sit, demurely, with her hands clasped in her lap. He introduced a hair-band, then took it off. He went for thoughtful, innocent then womanly — but nothing worked. She was impervious. Not indifferent or defensive, just impervious. Something resisted him but it felt just like its opposite. It was as though there was nothing there. His hands felt oddly awkward now, like flippers or spades. He pushed his hair out of his eyes and it felt like somebody else was doing it. He had another go. At last, he said, “I, um.”

​

She looked at him expectantly.

 

“I need more time.”

 

She didn’t say — she didn’t seem to be thinking — anything. Her face was perfectly in proportion but this perfection didn’t seem to have anything to do with her. It was like fruit, no more expressive than that. Again, he nodded, like an idiot.

 

“More time. I need…”

 

He moved his hands together and then apart, as though he was trying to negotiate two shapes into alignment. She smiled, but it was astonishing, really, how you could smile and yet seem to communicate so little. He felt a frustration that was unfamiliar. Diane was like some stubborn material that had refused to shape itself under the sculptor’s hands. He wanted, just for a moment, to throw something at her. He said, “Tomorrow?”

 

She shrugged.

 

“If you say so.”

 

But nothing happened. Not on the next day or the next. She smiled, she fluttered — she flapped — her lashes, but she could have been anyone. She had a blandness that felt, somehow, generic. All over the country, there were girls like this, smiling and giggling in ways that were, essentially, identical. 

​

“What do you want to be, Diane?”

​

He sounded both as irritated and as nonplussed as he was feeling but, at first, she didn’t seem to understand. Her mouth moped downwards, pointlessly sensual. At last, she smiled and shrugged.

​

“Dunno.”

​

She giggled.

​

“Sandie Shaw!”

​

She kicked her feet and waved her hands but later, in the darkroom, it looked abstract; a mime: she was mimicking somebody else’s joie de vivre. Her face was an eerie blank. Frank stared at her. That night, Queeny turned to face him. Wherever in the bed she was, she seemed to wallow in it. But she also loomed above him. 

​

“You’re old enough to be her dad.”

​

Outside, the shouts and the snort of traffic sounded more intimate than anything in here. The clock gave a thump, like the thump of an axe, whenever a minute passed. Queeny breathed, laboriously, through her mouth. When Frankie stroked the bedspread he realised, all over again, just how thin it was; how it seemed to express his dissatisfaction.

​

But Queeny was wrong. He had no sexual interest in the girl. If he could have put it into words he would have told you that she represented something. It was intangible; something unrecognisable that he had lost, or, rather, had never had. Queeny’s grossness — the look she had, now, of a duenna — was of a piece with the way that Frankie’s life felt cumbersome, somehow, both circumscribed and dutiful. He’d been a soldier and then a husband and now he was a photographer. Each role was, as it were, prepared for you: you knew exactly how to act. But Diane didn’t seem to be anything. She was 17, she said; she worked in a factory. But beyond that and beneath it there was a blank. At first, he’d thought: she’s lost. But she wasn’t. She was free.

​

In the third week, she came in wearing a jacket that was daubed with the Union Jack. He asked her what it meant. Again, she shrugged.

​

“Nothing,” she said.

​

He thought that that was perfect. If he had had the nerve, he would have asked her to take off everything else; to roll around in it. Instead, he asked her to pull a face. He had her smoking, then chewing gum. Her sense of freedom was elusive, like a rare bird. You had to stalk it. He began to see that the more wooden her gestures were, the more she seemed to toss them off or wilfully exaggerate them, the freer she seemed to be. He encouraged her to strike poses but to undermine them, too: to cross her eyes or fake a limp. He joked; he prodded her with the camera. He gimped around the room, his hands lolling below his knees. 

​

“You’re mad,” she said.

​

Still, she kept coming back. She was flattered, he thought. She thought that he found her beautiful.

​

But something strange was happening elsewhere. It was Harry’s wife who first drew attention to it. Marching into the shop, she waved a photograph in Queeny’s face. She said, “What’s this? Go on: who’s that supposed to be?”

​

Queeny peered down into the photograph. She looked incongruously scholarly, but cautious too, as though whatever it was might bite her. Nora, the Nora in the picture, looked angry and defensive. She gripped her grandchild just as though she wouldn’t let you have him back. You saw that the love she felt was like a net or a set of chains; it seemed appropriate that the child should be squirming to be released. Queeny said, "You, Nora. ‘as you.”

​

But Nora backed away. 

​

“It’s not. I’m telling you. He’s made me look…”

​

She couldn’t seem to find the word. Her face contorted, so that in the end she seemed to spit it out.

​

“Dreadful,” she said.

​

Yes, Queeny saw this at once. Nora was full of dread. She held her grandson like a treasure that would, inevitably, be snatched away. Where she had wanted softness — a shimmering gauze of sentiment — Frankie had found a terrible sort of truth.

​

And he kept doing it. He made builders look like slabs of meat: their unresponsive eyes were like the eyes you’d paste onto a teddy bear. Bookies were twitchy. Mods were sly. More: swishy and droll. People began to go elsewhere. One day, Queeny edged into the studio. Diane sat, topless, in pink shorts, smoking a cigarette. Around her, there was a ripped-up pile of schoolbooks. Queeny ignored her. She said, “What’s this?”

​

He didn’t seem to know. He smiled and shrugged. He looked like he was drunk. She was aware of herself in a way that she hadn’t been for years. She felt enormous but she had a countervailing urge to flaunt herself; to use her body like a fist. 

​

“Who’s she supposed to be?” she said. “Nell Gwynn?”

 

Diane was looking round the studio like she was looking for her clothes. 

​

“You’re ruining us,” Queeny said.

​

She raised an accusing arm. She was Commerce; Morality.

​

“These pictures. What you’re doing. It’s dirty, Frank.”

​

Even as she was saying it, she knew that she wasn’t saying what she meant.

​

“It’s filth.”

​

She meant that Frankie was digging up what would be better hidden. No-one, she knew, would want what Frankie wanted on their mantelpiece. And she was right. The shop closed two years later.

​

Which makes her pause, now, at the picture in the middle of the gallery. It is the shop but, somehow, a platonic version; shorn of all the sounds and smells that she remembers, it looks iconic: terribly significant. The card beside it talks about Frankie’s “purple patch” but all Queeny can remember are the unpaid bills and the customers who crossed the street whenever they saw her coming. Here they all are: Harry, an overweening drunk, and tarty Marge and Morris the homosexual; poor swishy Mo. Here, too, is Diane — four or five of her, gurning and doing the splits and showing you that, really, she hadn’t a thought in her head. That was what Frankie had managed to expose, all unbeknownst to him: her silliness. His silliness.

​

She wants to cry but when has she ever cried? Even the room is a sort of dream; pristine, bright white, soft, somehow, it buoys you up and has you drifting from face to face. The journalists ask: what do you think about when you look at them? How do you feel about the fact that he’s not here to see it?

​

Queeny shrugs.

​

“His loss,” she says.