Cathy Come Home?

[THYLACINE]

I read with interest the post "I was born in the real slums of Sheffield" and it got me thinking, The 30's were a bit before my time but I encountered a kind of poverty in Sheffield when I was growing up in the sixties which I think about even today. I lived in Firvale and regularly visited the local watering holes, the Canon Hall, Sportsman and Tollgate. Drinking one night with my brother-in-law and his brother, we met a young couple in the pub. I can't remember their names but I do recall the girl was very pretty, in fact I was quite smitten by her although they both appeared to be rather thin and pale. They were living together but not married - still quite controvercial at that time and were renting a flat in Burngreave. To someone like me, living with mum and dad, barely out of school and still occasionally reading the Beano, their lifestyle seemed like an impossible Bohemian dream. We saw them a few times but then they went missing. My brother-in-law who knew where they lived, suggested we call rouund there one night on our way to the pub. It was one of those large Victorian brick houses which had seen better times, divided into 4 flats and sadly in need of repair. We ran up one, perhaps two dimly lit, creaking staircases, their room was large and dark with a high ceiling, cold and depressing and devoid of any home comforts. There was a beaten-up lounge on which the girl reclined and an armchair which he sat in, a tiny gas fire but nothing else as I recall. The chair arm served as a table on which they were playing a game of cards. We laughed and joked for a while and offered to shout them a drink but they declined. Although we dismissed the whole episode and never spoke about it, that scene has haunted me to this day, It still saddens me when I think about it and I often wonder what became of them.