It made sense to Nadia now, why she had felt so protective towards Kam; he was family. She wondered if the same urge to stand up for him would have been there regardless. She hoped so.
Kam’s words echoed around her head. He’d had enough of the beatings and the slander against his name for being Polish. He was going to take his younger brother, her grandfather, and leave. She had to stop him.
The problem was, how was she supposed to convince him that everything was going to be okay? That she knew about how his family had managed to find somewhere to settle in England? All Marcel could see was that his life was miserable and no one wanted him around.
As soon as they arrived home on Sunday afternoon, Nadia dashed straight up to her room, claiming she needed to catch up on schoolwork. Instead, she searched for information about Polish people in the UK in the 1940s.
She found that at the end of the Second World War, the map of Poland was redrawn and the Eastern part absorbed by Russia (known as the Soviet Union at that time) just as Kam had said. What shocked her was how this had been agreed with the UK Prime Minister and the American President of the time, allowing Russia to move all the Polish people out of the areas they now controlled. This meant it had been easy for Russia to take over the rest of Poland, making it into a Communist state, something the Polish people had tried so hard to avoid.
Nadia printed out the information and quickly texted Tomma and Ash to ask them for an emergency meeting. Tomma messaged them all back, inviting them around to his house. Then she ran downstairs.
“Just got to dash over to Tomma’s. I need to get a homework sheet I forgot to pick up on Friday,” she shouted, in the general direction of the living room, before sprinting out of the house and across the road.
Ash lived close to Tomma, so Nadia knew he would be able to get there in a few minutes. Only Jess lived on the opposite side of Kirkshaw Village, but with any luck, Nadia hoped she’d be at Tomma’s anyway.
“I’ve found out some stuff that I need to show you guys,” Nadia said as soon as Tomma opened the door. “Is Jess here?”
“Yes, she’s here and Ash is. . . right behind you. Hiya, mate.”
Nadia and Ash both kicked off their shoes and Ash hung up his coat. Nadia hadn’t even bothered to put hers on.
Tomma led them into the study where the three of them stared expectantly at Nadia, waiting to hear what she had to say. Nadia told them all she knew about Marcel.
“I knew it,” Jess said. “Didn’t I tell you this had something to do with you?”
“Yeah alright, don’t rub it in,” Nadia said. “Anyway, listen to this.” She told them about what happened with Russia. “Apparently, the UK government wanted to keep Russia on their side in case another war broke out, which I suppose is understandable after everything that had just happened. I feel so sorry for the Polish people though.”
It was hard to imagine what life must have been like at that time, worrying about the threat of another war, but it didn’t seem fair that in order not to offend Russia, Winston Churchill took away all the military titles from the Polish officers who had helped the British Army defeat Hitler.
“These men weren’t even allowed to take part in the Victory Parade,” she said. “It must have made the Polish people living in Britain feel so unwelcome.”
Nadia read testaments from some of them who said they were afraid to go back to their home country in case they were seen as enemies of the Communist state and shot. At the same time, there were people in the UK who couldn’t understand why the Polish didn’t want to go home and instead accused them of being supporters of Hitler.
“This must have been why the boys at school were so horrible to Kam,” Jess said. “And from the sound of things, it didn’t get any easier for his people.”
“No, it didn’t,” Nadia said. “Look! It says here, many people in the UK felt threatened by the Polish refugees, particularly when it came to jobs and the Polish were even banned from working in certain industries.”
Whichever way she looked at it, Nadia couldn’t see how it was at all fair for the Polish people in the UK at that time. She sat down at the large desk in Tomma’s study and stared at the ceiling wondering what sort of a world her grandad had grown up in and how hard it must have been for him. She’d never heard any stories about his early life, but supposed he must have been very young at the time of the Second World War. Perhaps it hadn’t affected him too much and things had improved eventually.
“That sucks,” Ash said. “But listen, I’ve been doing some research too.” He waved some papers around in front of them. “It’s the list of all the headmasters of our school since it opened.” He put the papers down on the desk and pointed to a name.
“Mr Fitzpatrick!” Nadia said. “He was Headmaster until 1947. Oh my God, I just remembered something.”
“What?” Ash said.
“Before we went to get the cane, Kam told me Fitzpatrick was retiring at the end of the year. So that means it must have been 1947 we went back to; Fitzpatrick’s last year.”
“There’s another thing too, look,” Ash said, turning towards the computer and pulling up a web page. “One of the coldest winters on record was 1947. It lasted well into March and was at a time when the UK was still under rationing. It must have been such a tough time back then.”
Nadia turned towards the computer and typed in a search for Polish people in 1947. She looked down the results list.
“Here we go,” she said. “On the 22nd March 1947, Parliament passed the Polish Resettlement Act. It meant Polish military refugees and their families were allowed to settle and work in Britain or within its Empire.”
“That would have meant Kam, his younger brother, and the rest of their family would have been safe and protected by the law from that moment onwards,” Tomma said. He looked at his watch. “It’s the 22nd March tomorrow. Could that mean anything?”
“If the year we went back to really is 1947, it means tomorrow is the day of the Polish Resettlement Act,” Jess said. “It means Kam and his family would be officially allowed to stay and work in the UK. We have to tell him.”
“I guess now we know why we were sent back there,” Ash said. He looked at Nadia and blew out a long, low breath. “Funny how the school keeps doing this to us, isn’t it?”
“I know, but there was something else Kam told me,” Nadia said. “He was going to take his brother, my grandad, and run away somewhere. He thinks it’s his responsibility to keep his brother safe and if that means taking him away, he’s prepared to do that. I just hope we can get back in time to tell him about all of this before it’s too late. We need to make sure he still gets to meet my Nana or I won’t be born!”