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.”
§ 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....
§ 8
In the front room of No. 24, Kitchener Road there was a Collard and Collard piano. It had jaundiced keys and a bosom of yellow silk interlaced with fretwork. Most of the lower notes said “Hanng-g-g,” and the five bottom ones all said the same “hang-g-g.” ... The piano-tuner came. He was of the “ping-ping-wrench” and the “see-what-can-be-done” variety. He said:
“It’s bin a good interment in its time.... Pity the dampness got in it.”
Catherine watched him as he tightened the wires and prodded the notes. At the end he played Thalberg’s “Home, Sweet Home,” with variations.