Patsy Kain was born into England's wealthy upper-middle class and following boarding school was sent to Europe to ease her boredom. In 1937 she eloped with a New Zealand airman and settled in the South Island of New Zealand when peace came, living a life of complete contrast to her English upbringing.
Kain’s father owned a sugar beet factory in Norfolk and their family lived in a large manor house. Kain describes the large, cold sixteen room house where she spent most of her childhood. She tells how she and her younger brother hardly saw their parents, living mostly in the nursery and were indulged by the young maids. After breakfast Kain explains they would be “turned out”, sent outdoors without toys to play outside. She looks back on this as a blessing now because without any toys they were forced to use their imaginations.
The sugarbeet factory was in the village of Cantley and most people from the village would have been involved, riding bicycles to get to work in fleets. She and her brother were not allowed to mix with people of the village and the local school was deemed far too rough. Kain says she was sent to what she calls, a Dame school, a private house run by a woman, though not necessarily educated to teach. Their mother was very religious, so they would attend church up to twice a week and she was involved in the local choir. Kain learned to read and write, and then learned French from their Swiss governess, a language she is still fluent in today.
Her mother allowed their house maid and a cook, who were sisters, to have their male visitors visit them in the kitchen on their time off. Kain describes the washer woman, Mrs Langham who walked four miles to get to their house at 8am. Her days were spent pumping water from the soft water well, filling and lighting the coppers and pegging out washing whilst she laughed and talked non-stop before setting off for home at four pm.
Kain thinks that although they were considered wealthy, they must have led a spartan life as the house was freezing - apart from a few main rooms which hosted fires. In 1929 she was sent to an unusual, advanced boarding school where pupils wore boys’ clothes and there were no rules. She explains that the responsibility of schoolwork lay entirely with the pupil and it was here she learned independence.
When at the age of fifteen she was moved to a conventional boarding school, she began to play up – now being told what and how to do everything. However, following a promise made by her father that if she passed her school certificate at the age of sixteen, she could leave school, she worked like fury and passed, much to her father’s amazement. Not knowing how to occupy his daughter however he purchased overseas tickets and sent her initially to France.
In 1937 she met Gary Kain, a New Zealand pilot with whom, aged twenty-one, she eloped with the following year. Kain describes how the cook and her brother were in on the escape and assisted her disappearance without her parents’ knowledge. She recalls packing absolutely everything, including her pet pigeon, thinking she may never return to the house. Kain explains she left a letter of explanation for her parents.
After a short spell in Lincolnshire, where her brother in-law was stationed and they were able to apply for a special licence, they married. War broke out on September 3rd 1939, nineteen days before their first son was born. Kain says she was able to travel with her husband, as and when he was posted and led a romantic but strange day to day existence. She says morale was maintained by not dwelling on, nor talking about, the deaths that inevitably occurred to those around them during the war.
Kain explains how she would track her husband’s movements by getting his flight number via banal afternoon phone calls regarding his return for dinner, then tune into shortwave radio broadcasts that would identify his departure and status. She says the family slept together, both children and parents in one bed, as they’d decided should they be killed, they wanted to go together.
Following the war, they left for New Zealand. After two years farming in Geraldine, they became eligible to move onto a rehab farm in Fairlie. Coming out to New Zealand was full of new challenges which she says embraced enthusiastically. She remembers cooking over an old coal range with a lantern hanging off her arm and washing clothes by hand or dolly, noting she was the first woman in the area to own a wringer washing manchine. Kain says they had no money, but then nobody did, everyone was in same boat and had a lot of fun.