Time School: We Will Honour Them

by Nikki Young

  “Oh, I hope something magical happens at the station, otherwise we’re stuffed,” Jess said.

  “It will. I’m sure of it,” Ash said.

  “I wish I had your confidence,” Jess said.

  “Well, we’ve had such a bummer of a day,” Ash said. “Our luck couldn’t get much worse, could it?”

  “Are you asking or telling?” Tomma asked.

  “Telling,” Ash said. “Come on, have faith people! We’re going to get home. Just think, central heating and no Spam.”

  Nadia laughed despite her mood. “Spam,” she said, repeating it to herself as she shook her head. Trust Ash to look on the lighter side of any situation.

  She kept the fingers on her good hand crossed just in case and when they reached the station and saw there was a train due at 4:00pm she let herself relax a little.

  “Let’s just hope it’s the right train,” she said.

  “Shall we walk to the end of the platform?” Jess suggested.

  They always ended up in the last carriage when they experienced these strange, magical journeys back in time. This time was no exception. As the train approached the platform, the shrill screech of the brakes as they gripped against the tracks echoed through the howling wind; a wind that seemed to pick up speed as the train came closer.

  The children found themselves struggling against a sudden force that caused other passengers to abandon their attempts to move any further along the platform. This meant the four of them were the only ones seemingly silly enough to try.

  “Come on, hold on to each other,” Tomma said, grabbing both Nadia and Jess by the arm.

  Ash held on to Nadia’s other arm and they each bent forwards as they did their best to stride towards the train. The wind was so strong, it sneaked its way under Nadia’s hood and seemed to settle in her ears, as if taunting her with its strength. This only made her more determined.

  “Come on!” she shouted above the howls. “We need to get to the last carriage.”

  As they reached the carriage door, Ash stretched out and opened it, pushing Nadia in. Jess followed and the boys joined them before they collapsed in a heap on the bench seats.

  “What was all that about?” Tomma asked.

  “I’ve no idea,” Ash said as he stood and went over to the door. He stuck his head out of the window and then straight back in again. “You literally can’t see anything past this carriage. It’s gone all foggy again.”

  Nadia got up to join him. As she looked out, all that was visible was the carriage they were in, as if the rest of the train didn’t exist.

  “I guess this means we’re on the right train then,” she said. “No one else would be stupid enough to even try to get back here. It’s only because we knew we had to. It should mean we get home.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Jess said, pulling her coat tighter around her as she did an involuntary shiver. “Shut the window, Nad. I’m freezing.”

  Tomma moved to sit beside Jess and pulled her closer to him. Jess rested her head on his shoulder. Nadia pulled the window up, snapping it shut. She went to sit opposite her friends with Ash beside her. Nadia kept her eyes focused on the window and the non-existent view outside, wishing she was cuddled up with Oliver Ward, rather than sitting next to Ash.

  Once the train moved away from the platform, she began to relax and as she did so, she forgot about Oliver and began to think instead about Kam and his awful situation. She hoped he wasn’t in too much pain that night.

  When the train arrived at Kirkshaw station, it was clear the children were back in the present day. Not just because of the rundown condition of the old station building, with its graffitied walls and cracked plastic chairs, but due to the seemingly tropical temperature in comparison to where they had come from.

  “Thank goodness we’re back to some kind of warmth,” Jess said. “I hated that cold. I don’t know how anybody could put up with it.”

  “I know,” Nadia said. “I’m sure it’s a clue as to the year we were in. I bet there has to be some mention of a record cold winter after the War. Does anyone want to come to mine? I’m going to look up some stuff online.”

  “I can’t, sorry. I’m going back with Jess,” Tomma said, shrugging apologetically.

  Jess looked at him and then back at Nadia with a guilty face. “Sorry Nad.”

  “Ash?” Nadia said, turning to face him.

  Ash held up his hands as if in surrender. ‘I can’t either. I’m on strict instructions to get straight back home and lock myself away in my room until all my homework is done, but I’ll have a look later and see what I can find.”

  After watching Jess and Tomma leave, Nadia turned to walk the other way, feeling annoyed at how unreasonably irritated she was. She didn’t hold it against them for liking each other, so why was she so jealous? Not wanting to voice her thoughts to Ash, she walked alongside him in silence, her head full of thoughts as she stared down at the floor and her feet.

  “Hey Olly!”

  Ash’s voice, and the appearance of someone from behind them, caused Nadia to whip her head up and come back to the present moment. Then she felt her face go hot, as she realised it was Oliver Ward. He acknowledged Nadia only briefly before beginning to chat with Ash about the rugby match they’d recently played in together against a rival school. Then, he said his goodbyes and turned to set off down a neighbouring street.

  “Sorry to hear about your grandad, Nadia,” Oliver called over his shoulder.

  How did he know about my grandad?

  That was probably the closest she’d been to Oliver Ward; Nadia thought he’d barely noticed her. Nadia hadn’t even told Jess about her secret crush. What would be the point? Nadia decided to park those feelings to deal with another day. She needed to focus on Kam. It was time to speak to her dad about the Polish side of her family.

  Chapter 13

  Nana

  As Nadia pushed open the door, it bounced against something and sprung back, almost shutting straight in her face. She squeezed through the narrow gap and found a suitcase in the way, standing to attention, waiting to do its duty.

  “Mum, is someone arriving or leaving?” Nadia shouted into the empty hall. “There’s a bag blocking the doorway.”

  She let the door shut behind her with a heavy bang, hoping it would bring attention to her arrival back home. It worked.

  “Stop banging that door! How many times have I told you not to do that?” Nadia’s dad appeared at the top of the stairs and skipped down with surprisingly light, quick steps. He was rubbing his head with a towel. His hair was damp and sticking up everywhere as though he’d just come out of the shower.

  “Oh, Dad, hi,” Nadia said. “I didn’t know you’d be home already. Are you, you know, okay and everything?”

  She wasn’t sure what to say and couldn’t imagine how her dad must be feeling about his father passing away. Mr Kaminski reached for his daughter and pulled her towards him in a rough hug. It wasn’t often he did that now she was almost a teenager. She reached around his middle and gave him a squeeze.

  “Sorry about your dad,” she said, in a soft whisper.

  “Thanks,” Mr Kaminski said into her ear before pulling away. “You okay sausage?”

  Nadia laughed. Her dad hadn’t called her that since she was about five.

  “Is this your suitcase?” she asked, as she took off her coat and walked towards the cupboard under the stairs. She opened the door and flung her coat inside.

  “It is indeed. We’re all going to see Nana.”

  “We are? When?” Nadia said, her head appearing around the edge of the cupboard door.

  “Tonight. We have a long journey down to Eastbourne, so we might as well get cracking.”

  Nadia didn’t want to moan, but she was exhausted from her day at Hickley School Past and sitting in the car for hours on end was the last thing she wanted to do. Her dad needed to be with his mum though, she understood. She fought back tears, feeling suddenly emotional but not knowin
g why.

  “I’d better go and pack then,” she said, taking a deep breath and forcing a smile for her dad before going upstairs, where she bumped into her mum, who was coming out of her own room with another small suitcase.

  “Oh, hi love.” Mrs Kaminski gestured for Nadia to follow her back into her room, where she shut the door behind them and lowered her voice. “Sorry to spring this on you, poppet, but Dad’s obviously upset and wants to go and see Nana. I didn’t think he should go on his own and I know Nana will be pleased to have us all there with her, especially you, as she hasn’t seen you in ages. Can you be ready in fifteen minutes?”

  Nadia nodded and gave her mum a hug before leaving the room to go and gather her things.

  “Hey, Mum, are we just going for the weekend?” she shouted out.

  “Of course. We’ll be back by Sunday afternoon. You can’t miss school.”

  Nadia thought she could have easily missed school given the circumstances.

  “I’ll make some sandwiches for us to have in the car and we’ll stop at the services on the way,” her mum said in time to the rhythm of her steady steps down each stair and the sound of the suitcase bumping down after her.

  *

  It felt like the middle of the night by the time they got to the B&B in Eastbourne, even though it was only 10:30pm. The place Nadia’s mum had booked for them was just around the corner from where Nana lived and they were going to see her first thing in the morning.

  Nadia trudged up the stairs after her parents, dragging her bag behind her. Thankfully her mum had booked Nadia her own room. She cleaned her teeth with the minimum of effort, splashed some water on her face and crawled into bed, with thoughts of the day they’d spent at Hickley School going round and round in her head, including meeting Kam and their encounter with the bullies, followed by the cane punishment from the Headmaster.

  *

  It took a couple of minutes to click where she was when she woke the next morning. The bed was so comfortable and the room so dark that it didn’t register straight away. Then the soft tapping of a knock at the door, followed by her mum’s voice telling her to get up for breakfast, brought Nadia back to the present.

  Having taken no notice of anything the previous night, Nadia sat up in bed and looked around the room. It was small but cosy, decorated in plain white; the antique pine chest of drawers and wardrobe giving it a vintage feel.

  Not too shabby, Nadia thought and she even had her own bathroom, which was a bonus.

  She went downstairs to see an enormous full English breakfast cooked by Mr Carson, the owner of the B&B, waiting for them.

  “I didn’t even realise we were right on the seafront,” Nadia said, as they left the guesthouse to go to her nana’s Retirement Home.

  She pulled her coat tighter around her chest, lifting her face to catch the breeze and the taste of the salty sea air on her tongue. A seagull cried out as it flew overhead. Nadia looked up towards the noise, but the sun was too low and bright to see where it came from. Even though the morning March air whipped around her and whistled in her ears, the winter sun promised a beautiful day.

  “Aw, it’s gorgeous here,” she said, turning around to admire the double-fronted Georgian exterior of the B&B, its painted light grey walls glinting in the sunlight.

  “I know,” her mum said. “I feel awful we don’t make it down here more often. It’s what happens when someone is no longer here. You start to have these little regrets.” She looked at Nadia with a sad smile and Nadia remembered how her mum hadn’t spoken to her own parents for years and had never had chance to patch up her differences with them before they’d died; their strict, over-bearing, religious parenting style had been too much for the rebellious teen her mum had been, apparently, although Nadia couldn’t imagine her mum like that.

  They both turned to look at Mr Kaminski, who was walking ahead of them, hands tucked in both pockets of his jeans, with his shoulders slightly hunched.

  They let him lead the way and held back while he went in to greet his mum. Nadia watched them through the glass wall that separated the main lounge from the lobby. Nana looked so much older and smaller than she had remembered; a tiny dot of a lady against her dad’s tall, bulky frame. It was strange to think of them as mother and son.

  Dorothy pulled away from her son and looked towards them, gesturing for them to come in. Nadia followed her mum and waited her turn to give Nana a hug, taking care in case she broke her; she could feel Nana’s bony frame under her soft squashy skin. Dorothy was crying, though Nadia wasn’t sure if it was grief for the loss of her husband or happiness at seeing them all. Perhaps it was both.

  “Let me look at you,” Dorothy said, holding Nadia at arm’s length. She fluffed Nadia’s hair with her fingers. “These gorgeous curls! They’re just like mine used to be. You’re a beautiful young woman, you are. Do you know that?”

  Nadia felt her face turn bright red and she shrugged, not knowing what to say.

  “You courting yet?” Dorothy said.

  “What?” Nadia frowned.

  “Courting. You know, got a young man in tow?”

  Nadia looked sharply to either side, checking if anyone had heard. Her nana’s voice was loud, due to hearing loss probably, but it looked as though most of the other residents had the same problem because no one seemed to have reacted.

  “Nana!’ she said. ‘I’m only twelve!”

  “Well, I’m sure I was courting your grandad at that age.” Dorothy looked deep in thought, taken back to another lifetime. “Actually, perhaps not, more like fourteen. Still, you look so grown up. Is that all you are? Twelve?”

  Nadia nodded and silently prayed that one of her parents would change the subject and come to her rescue. She didn’t need to worry. Dorothy had drifted off again into her own thoughts and as Nadia looked at her, she saw eyes shining with tears. She gave her nana another hug and helped her to sit.

  “I miss him,” Dorothy said, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief she pulled out from one of her sleeves. She reached out to take the mug of tea Nadia’s dad held out for her.

  “Tell me what Grandad was like when you first met,” Nadia said.

  Dorothy smiled. “He was handsome and warm and kind. We met at the dance hall and he asked me for a dance. We talked and talked all night and when it was time to go home, he walked me to my door and gave me a kiss on the cheek, right here.” Dorothy placed a bony finger on the top of her right cheek and rubbed it ever so gently. “Alex, get my photo album from the cupboard in my room will you?” she said. Nadia’s dad nodded and got up. “I’ve got some pictures of the two of us when we were still in our teens. I bet you won’t even recognise us.”

  Dorothy’s eyes seemed to sparkle as she took hold of the photo album and began to talk about the good old days. Nadia giggled at the photos of a younger Dorothy with her sweetheart. She stopped at a photo of Grandad with a bunch of other young men, some slightly older than him. Her heart began to beat a little faster as she leaned in to get a closer look.

  “Who are they?” she said.

  “Let’s see,” said Dorothy, as she adjusted her glasses and brought the book up closer to her. “Ah yes, that’s your grandad with his brothers. He was the youngest of four, you know.”

  Dorothy pointed to each person on the photo in turn, whilst Nadia took deep breaths and tried to keep calm.

  “That’s Jakub, the oldest, then there was Filip. They both fought in the War you know, with their father. They escaped from Poland when Russia invaded and had a terrible journey across Europe to get over here. They fought for us with the Polish regiment, whilst their mum, Agata worked at the base camp. She managed to find a family to take in the two younger boys until they could all settle.”

  Nadia could feel herself twitching with impatience.

  “Who is the other boy, Nana?” she asked.

  “Well, there’s your grandad and that one’s his brother, Marcel.”

  “Marcel Kaminski?” Nadia said, feelin
g herself go cold and goosebumps forming over her arms and the back of her neck.

  Nana shot her a puzzled look. “Yes, of course! What else would he be called?”

  Chapter 14

  Roots

  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.