Mr Skin brought his new wife back with him to England and their family soon began to grow, but with just his pension from the Army to live on, feeding their five children grew increasingly hard. Throughout Kathleen’s childhood, the family moved from village to village around Cambridgeshire, always going where the housing was cheapest. Wherever they went, they were seen as eccentrics. Mrs Skin scandalised the local women by allowing her daughters to wear trousers, while her husband was the only man they knew who was happy to push a pram for his wife.
Kathleen had inherited her mother’s striking red hair and green eyes, as well as her gift for performance. She and her sisters would compose poetry and plays that they put on for the village children, and her older sister Lila kept her friends in the playground enthralled with tales of how she was really a princess, forced to live in poverty until she could one day return to reclaim her palace.
The Skins’ house was always a favourite with the local kids, thanks to the unusual and imaginative games the family played. But one day when the other children had all left, Mr Skin turned to Kathleen and asked, ‘Why don’t you go home as well?’
‘I am home, Dad,’ Kathleen replied, wondering if her father was playing some kind of joke.
‘No, you’re not,’ her father insisted. ‘You’re not one of mine.’
Kathleen did her best to shrug off the strange remark, but it wasn’t long before her father was exhibiting other odd behaviours. Mr Skin had imparted a love of nature to his children, dragging them out of bed in their pyjamas to witness flocks of migrating birds coming over from Africa, or to count falling stars. But now he began talking to the birds as if they could understand him, and disappearing for hours on end, no one knew where. When he was found one day wandering the roads with no idea who he was, the whole family was forced to acknowledge that something was seriously wrong, and Mr Skin allowed himself to be taken to Fulbourn mental hospital.
X-rays eventually revealed that the shell that had almost killed Mr Skin in the war had left bits of shrapnel scattered throughout his brain. The peculiar effects came and went – for months at a time he would be perfectly fine and was able to return home to his family, but then the madness would begin again, and he would have to go back to the asylum.
Kathleen was a bright girl, but her educational prospects had been limited. Her older sisters Maevis and Lila had gone to grammar school, but by the time her turn came around there simply wasn’t the money to send her – even though she had won a part-scholarship from the council. Instead, she attended the local technical school, where even her teachers admitted that her academic abilities were wasted. Kathleen found many of the classes there dull, but she did enjoy the weekly childcare lessons. She loved bathing the tiny babies and learning about their development, so when she left school she decided to become a nanny.
Kathleen had been working for a doctor’s family in West London when the opportunity came up to visit Denmark with the church summer camp. Her employers had willingly given her the time off, and she spent an enjoyable few days swimming in the sea and learning to sail a dinghy.
On her way back through Germany, she stayed with a family in Kiel who her father had befriended after the war, in the belief that if old enemies could bury the hatchet it might help prevent another major conflict. They had three strapping blond blue-eyed boys, the oldest of whom, Konrad, was about her age.
One day, the boys invited Kathleen to come with them on an organised march through the local countryside. ‘It will be great fun,’ Konrad told her enthusiastically. Never one to turn down a chance for adventure, Kathleen agreed, joining the three lads as they set off in matching brown shirts with swastika armbands.
They met up with a group of younger boys and girls who Konrad explained were Deutsches Jungvolk – the junior section of the Hitler Youth. As the march progressed, they were joined by more and more young people, until Kathleen found herself among hundreds of German youngsters all dressed in Nazi uniforms.
The march culminated in a huge rally where everyone performed the Hitler salute together. For a British girl, far from home, it was a strange and unsettling spectacle to witness.
When the boys brought Kathleen back to their house that evening, their father was waiting for her anxiously. ‘You must pack your bags now,’ he told her. ‘It is time for you to leave.’
‘But I’ve still got a few days’ holiday left,’ she protested.
‘No, you must go now,’ the man insisted. ‘You cannot be in Germany.’
He found a friend with a car and took the bewildered girl to the Dutch border, where he gave her instructions to catch a ferry back to England.
Two days later, German forces invaded Poland. Kathleen had scarcely got back to British soil before her country found itself at war with Germany.
The family Kathleen was working for had fled London for Wales, anxious to get their baby daughter out of harm’s way. She joined them again in the small seaside town of Tenby, where they were staying with the doctor’s elderly mother. In addition to her other duties, Kathleen now found she had to wait on the demanding old lady as well.
Kathleen wished that her job could take her to somewhere more exotic than Wales, but she had always loved the ocean, and enjoyed the sea view from her new room. She soon made friends in Tenby among the nannies of other well-to-do families who had evacuated themselves from London. She looked forward to the afternoons, when they would go for long walks together, pushing their prams along the sea front.
The girls often went up to Saundersfoot, a pretty village with a harbour a little way up the coast. One day they arrived to find that it was crawling with soldiers. ‘What on earth’s going on?’ one of the other nannies wondered.
‘Why don’t we find out?’ said Kathleen, going straight up to the nearest man in uniform. ‘What are you lot doing here?’ she asked boldly.
‘We’re here to practise our shooting,’ the man told her proudly. ‘We’re training with the Royal Artillery.’
As he finished speaking, Kathleen heard the sound of guns in the distance. A round was being fired out to sea.
‘Ooh, listen to that!’ remarked Kathleen’s friend excitedly. But as they pushed their prams along the seafront that afternoon, the girls found the sight of the handsome soldiers far more distracting than the noise of the guns. There were plenty of young officers about, and as they passed the young ladies they smiled and touched their hats, aware of the effect their uniforms were having.
When Christmas came, Kathleen used her time off to go home and keep her mother company. Poor Mr Skin would be spending the festive season in the asylum, and by now all but one of the children – Kathleen’s youngest brother Lance – had joined the forces. Her eldest sister Maevis was in the ATS, her brother Cecil had joined the RAF and her sister Lila was in the WRNS, working on a naval base at Scapa Flow. Mrs Skin, meanwhile, had taken a job as a nurse at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, which allowed her to pay the rent on a little house on Pembroke Street, not far from Lance’s school.
‘Hello, Mum,’ Kathleen said as she arrived home for the holiday, giving her mother a big hug. ‘What do you want to do while I’m here?’
‘I’d love to go and hear the carols at King’s,’ Mrs Skin told her. She had always loved classical music but the family finances rarely stretched to the kind of concerts she had enjoyed while growing up in Cape Town.
On Christmas Eve, Kathleen and her mother joined the queue outside King’s College Chapel, hoping to get a place for the three o’clock service. They were among the last to be admitted, but managed to find a pew near the back.
As the organist began playing the introduction to ‘It Came Upon a Midnight Clear’, three soldiers squeezed up next to them. They only had one hymn sheet between them, and the man next to Kathleen was humming along, obviously unable to see the words. She tapped his arm and offered to share her hymn sheet, and he began singing more confidently. He had a beautiful voice