§ 6
In the Co-operative Stores the shopman kept her waiting out of her turn. He had seen her sticking “transfers” on his shop-window and he did not like her. The Bockley and Upton Rising Friendly Co-operative and Industrial Society was an imposing institution with patent bacon-slicers and profuse calendar-distributing habits. Behind the polished mahogany counter the shopman fluttered about, all sleek and dapper, and in front stood Catherine, tired and impatient. There was a large co-operative almanac on the wall, and this she used to peruse diligently, supplementing therefrom the meagre knowledge of English history given her at Albany House. The almanac introduced a sort of miscellaneous historical calendar—for example: September 22nd. Battle of Zutphen, 1586. September 23rd. Massacres in Paris, 1789. Then in great staring red letters: September 24th. Opening of the Head Office of the Bockley and Upton Rising Friendly Co-operative and Industrial Society by Lord Fitzroy, 1903. With absolutely no sense of historical perspective at all, Catherine was quite prepared to believe that the last of these was the most prominent because it was also the most important.
When Kitchener Road was first built, in the full-flood of the Soudanese war-fever, it was for a time drowsily suburban. Then a too enterprising religious organization built a tin-mission at one end of it. The mission had a corrugated iron roof. Until then Kitchener Road had not quite decided whether it would tend in the social sense to rise or to fall. The corrugated iron roof forced a decision. Kitchener Road fell, and fell rapidly. From drowsiness it degenerated into frowsiness. A sleek off-licence appeared, with yellow-glazed tiles and an ungrammatical notice board: “No beer to be drank on the premises nor on the public highway.” Passing the tarred fence at the upper end the pedestrian ran the whole gamut of flippancy and indecency. And on the gate of the corner house could be seen—a final tribute to disappointed hopes—that sultry hall-mark of respectability: “No Hawkers, No Circulars, No Canvassers.” When the headmaster of the Downsland Road Council School heard that an intending pupil lived in Kitchener Road, he generally said: “I am very sorry, but we have no more room. If I were you I should try at Cubitt Lane.” ... The headmaster of the Downsland Road Council School did not like the headmaster of the Cubitt Lane Council School.... And on all the tram-standards in Bockley a handbill declared that “On July 11th, at the Upton Rising Petty Sessions, Gabriel Handcote, 21, and Richard Moulton, 19, both of Kitchener Road, Bockley, were fined 40s. and costs for travelling on a tramway-car with intent to avoid payment of fare.”