Liza Kemp is an 18-year-old factory worker and the youngest of 13 children, now living alone with her aging and incompetent mother. Very popular with all the residents—both young and old—of Vere Street, Lambeth, she cannot really make up her mind as far as her love life is concerned. She very much likes Tom, a boy her age, but when he proposes to her she rejects him ("I don't love yer so as ter marry yer").
She is persuaded to join a party of 32 who make a coach trip (in a horse-drawn coach, of course) to a nearby village.
On their way back, in the dark, Liza realizes that Jim Blakeston is making a pass at her by holding her hand. After their arrival back home, Jim manages to speak to her alone and to steal a kiss from her.
Seemingly without considering either the moral implications or the consequences of her actions, Liza feels attracted to Jim.
They never appear together in public because they do not want the other residents of Vere Street or their workmates to start talking about them. One of Jim Blakeston's first steps to win Liza's heart is to go to a melodramatic play with her on Saturday night. Afterwards, he succeeds in seducing her, although we never learn where they do it... obviously in the open. But in the end they do "slide down into the darkness of the passage".......
Royalty Notification
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