§ 7
Bockley was a sprawling urban district on the edge of the metropolitan area. Itself and Upton Rising had spread till they touched like adjacent blobs of ink on blotting-paper. But Upton Rising was aristocratic, plutocratic.... Its inhabitants had first-class season-tickets, wore spats, and read The Times on the 9.27 “Up.” They became district councillors, bazaar-openers, hospital-subscribers and such like. They wrote letters to the Bockley and Upton Rising Advertiser complaining of municipal apathy in the matter of water-carts. They said “Bockley must have a park to keep it out of mischief,” and lo! Bockley had one, with “keep-off-the-grass” notices and geometrical flower-beds, and a code of byelaws half a yard long, and a constant clientele of old-age pensioners and children flying paper windmills....
And in the meantime Bockley became conscious of its destiny. It bore all the unmistakable signs of a township that expects to be great some day—insurance agencies out of all proportion to the population, a Carnegie library, and a melancholy statue outside the Town Hall....
The origin of Bockley is simple and unconfusing.
Somewhere early on in the latter half of the nineteenth century the Great Eastern Railway Company, seeking parliamentary sanction to extend its suburban lines to Bockley, was compelled by law to carry workmen to and from Bockley and the City for twopence.... It was that twopence which made Bockley....