The first thing I saw when I came up the steps was a strange ugly church, just about as old as me, with a sharp-edged spire like a knife pointing up into the pale gray sky. I leaned against its wall, breathing deeply, resolving never to go into that tube again. The church was the only new thing I could see. The houses, rows and rows of them, set at angles and in crescents and avenues and shorter streets, were all old. Victorian, I suppose, tall and pale and rather gracious with porticos over their doors and white pillars thick as tree trunks and steps leading up to them. And there were a great many real trees, tall and old, with yellow- and green- and brown-spotted trunks like the camouflage trousers Daniel used to wear. Max’s wife, Selina, whom I’d talked to on the phone, said something about a canal, that this was called Little Venice because of a canal, but I couldn’t see it, not the direction I was walking in, along Warwick Avenue itself, going northward.

I was glad I hadn’t filled those cases but left most of my stuff to be sent on in Dad’s trunk. They were quite heavy enough as it was. There wasn’t much traffic, not moving, that is. All the cars were parked in the street, nose to tail, lining the pavements. A few people passed me, all young, and all of them belonging to what newspapers call “ethnic minorities.” That must be hateful, if you’re black or Chinese or one of these beautiful people from East Africa, to be called an ethnic minority. I found Russia Road without any trouble, as it was exactly where the A–Z said it would be, turning out of Castlemaine Road at a right angle.

It dips down a hillside to a roundabout at the bottom with flowers and bushes in the middle of it and mansions like Italian palaces all around. Russia Road itself is about as far from the idea of a suburb I had as that suburb is from a country lane. I don’t know why the words came into my head because I’d never thought them before or even know what they really mean, but I said to myself: Gothic London. The buildings on the left side were very tall, almost like towers joined together in a solid redbrick unbroken row. I hadn’t known people could build so high all that time ago, I thought it had come in with modern tower blocks. These houses are so tall they must shut out the sun until it gets very high in the sky. The camouflage trees look quite small in front of them.