LONDON PRIDE

Loop Line to Dartford

By DAVID ROGERS

WATERLOO, London Bridge, New Cross, St. John's, Lewisham, Lee Green, Motting- ham, New Eltham, Sidcup, Albany Park, Bexley . . .' The Jamaican voice, high among the rooftops of Charing Cross Station, trails across the Ted Heath country and out to the Martini People of mid-Kent. The Dartford train waits, lined up for the rarely sung journey home. 'Low down the line sings the Addiscombe train.' The loop line threads its way through suburbia almost halfway between the two smart villages of Green- wich and Dulwich. For most people, once. Lewisham has been reached anonymity begins. But not for the resident commuter families. To them, the South London Press and the Kentish Tittles have meaning and Albany Park is very different from Eltham—Eltham has Crown Woods, currently listed by parents on the loop line as the best South London Comprehensive.

People in my carriage seem to know each other, and when the train makes an unhurried stop outside Southwark Cathedral the evening papers are lowered and conversation begins.

`When is he going to do something about this line?'

'They do say that Mr. Lubbock has doubled the trains on the Orpington line,' added a woman, meaningfully.

'Getting worse, too, it is,'' said, a green-suited sehoolee who was trying to mark books.

'Well, if you stayed at school until you'd finished work there would be more room for us.' A boy who vas. trying to get a-feel of a girl

squashed against the window sniggered loudly and said, 'That's bleeding right.' The girl giggled, `You shouldn't say that,' but she moved en- couragingly forward. Nobody seemed to mind. Commuting seems an established part of the new human condition and demands sacrifices of dig- nity as well as comfort. '

At Mottingham the train noticeably thins out and there are audible sighs of relief. I get off at Albany Park. There are banks of flowers. Paper- boys are returning with empty bags to the news- agent's at the station entrance.

I cross the road and go into the pub. On either side are pre-war semi-detached three-up and three-downers, fronted by neat little hedges. Attractive and trim. The .scent of laburnum is heavy. It looks a Liberal candidate's dream. The pub, oak-panelled, cool and large, is quiet.

'You're early. Don't normally see people yet.' She looks at her watch. 'You must be off the six- thirty, then.'

I ask for a bitter. 'It's all keg. Nice to see someone. Used to work in town, I did. They all came in then regular at half-past five. Here they go straight home. Too near. That's what it is. They come in about nine.'

Soon Dan, appears. I'm going to live in his house and have come to meet his landlord. 'I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be late. I imagine you've been patronising. You mustn't. It's not really like you think. It's nice. Come on, I'll show you round.' We finish our beer and climb into an old dilapidated van. The gardens are being watered,

the prams are under the stairs. In the newhousing estates stretching on to the Sidcup by-pass baby- sitters are anxiously awaited. They are not the only people who are waiting. The number of road deaths recorded on the safety board in Eltham High Street continues to rise, and the rush-hour goes on.

We weave across a main road, past the queue for Help!, past a privet hedge, and turn into a

driveway that opens out on to a terrace. There is a tree-lined slope for about 300 yards and then the River Cray. All is green and still and fresh.

`And we're still in London. One of the smaller lungs—Footscray Place. The building was burnt down just after the war. The Kent education com- mittee got it from Lord Waring. Before that it belonged to the Vansittart family. The gardens are supposed to have been laid out by Capability Brown. Until a year ago you couldn't see a house from here, but now the speculators have come.' He points to a line of scaffolding which is penetrating the open ground near the river. 'Some Londoners—stuck away in piles of matchboxes in Kensington, not daring' to set foot outside for fear of the natives—don't realise the sheer beauty of suburbia. Richmond, Dulwich Common, Crystal Palace, Blackheath, Green- wich Park. If I'm going to have a family, give me the suburbs every time. If you're going to meet my landlord, we'd better move.'

We drive through quiet streets that occasion- ally give way to a cluster of lighted shops and a pub. A Christian Stewardship procession is break- ing up in the Dover Road, and golfers leaving the Shooters Hill course pause to watch. We stop at the 'Dover Patrol,' on Rochester Way, an enormous roadhouse, with draught Guinness served in three large rooms. Ten o'clock and the car park is crowded.

Inside the pub some students from Avery Hill Training College are talking loudly and stared at

disapprovingly by the silent couples sitting round the wall. `I watched that pair all night once,' says Dan. 'They didn't say a word to each other. Just sat while he drank two pints of bitter, and she had one sweet sherry.'

'Hello. I've been at a PTA. You the chap who is going to live in No. 18, for a bit?

Well, watch out you don't hang shirts up at the downstairs window. I don't mind coloureds, but

hang the shirts up and the whole street com- plains. Now, do you want a telly? I can get ydu one to rent, and the shop gives me a pound. Split it with you.'

He buys a round of drinks. `Mind you, I'd never have a telly, not in south London, not unless I doubled all my locks; a very bright gang round here, break in while you're all watching in the front room.'

`Time, please.'

`Come on. Your train. Even Lubbock can't get many trains after closing time to run into London. I'll take you to Blackheath.'

Quickly over the heath, ablaze with sodium lights, and through the one-way system into Mont- pelier Vale. The triangle of Blackheath village nestles in -adip. I stand alone on the platform. It is a warm, calm night. A train from London pulls in and a laughing family get out. They pause for a moment in front of the Churchill funeral coach, now resting in a siding. They climb the steps to the street and father stops to buy his ticket

for the morning. This is secure, respectable, family London. The Charing Cross train glides in and a girl with a cardigan over a tennis dress comes out of the waiting-room. This really is the London of Joan Hunter Dunn and Nell Dunn's London seems another towtv.