Before Lena Went Missing

"I wrap my arms around the trunk of the pear tree. How many years now? "

It was a long time ago when I saw them plant it. I didn't know back then it was a pear tree, but that is what it became. I try not to eat pears these days because they remind me too much of her. Not that I ever knew her very well. At first the best we did was say hi or hello on the odd occasion when I walked past her front yard and she was sitting on the fence or just standing there. Hello. Hi. I kept on walking, going down to the shops, running some errand for my mother. Buying groceries.

I don't know when I really noticed her. She must have been there a few years before I paid her any real attention. The girl next door. The foreign girl next door. The immigrant next door. Sometime after the Second World War she had moved there with her parents, older brother and younger sister. They were from one of those countries in Europe that was devastated. Devastated was the word my parents used to describe those countries. Hitler had done a terrible thing there and the Allies had come to their rescue. But not in time to save houses, buildings and lives. The lives should have come first.

When they moved in next door they had come from something called a Detention Centre. I was too young at the time to know why they had been detained. I was too young to know what detained or detention was. So I didn't think much about the girl next door and certainly not about the pear tree for a long long time. She kept to herself, went to a Catholic school, wore a uniform and mostly when I heard her talk I couldn't understand a word.

But one day she surprised me. I am Lena she said. I come from Poland. Do you like pears? Wow this was too much for my fifteen year old mind and I stared back as she sat on the old wooden and mesh fence that stretched across the front of their house. We pick the pears this weekend. You come and help. You can have some. You take them to your mother and father.

I'd never thought much about girls to that point. Certainly not whether I liked them or not. I knew that I probably would have to like them at some stage. It seemed like something I couldn't avoid. Most of my friends at school were talking about girls, some said they even had girlfriends. I didn't believe them. But I worried hugely that if I picked pears with Lena that she would think I was her boyfriend. I don't know where this idea came from but it suddenly appeared in my mind.

The best I can say now is that Lena was a skinny blonde girl. Her hair was not so long. It was more short than anything else. But I didn't know how to answer her question. I'd never been next door, never much thought about what they did there. They were quiet. No loud music, no blaring television programs, no cars being revved up in the driveway. Sometimes at night I would hear her brother Joseph in the shed building something though. Hammers, nails and then silence. And then someone, mostly his mother I guessed would call his name. This was usually around dinner time. Joseph. And he would say something that made no sense. Not English.

But I did end up going next door and helping Lena pick pears. There was just Lena and me. I was grateful really. I didn't want to meet her parents. I certainly didn't want to go into her house. I don't know why. I still don't. I wish I had. I would have liked to have seen what was in there. Maybe even meet Joseph and ask him what he was doing in the shed. Building models I would learn some time later. Joseph would eventually become my best friend and he and I would go searching for Lena but that is another story, this is the one about pears and why I hugged that tree.

Lena had a bucket to put the pears in and we had to pick them gently. They weren't allowed to be bruised because they were for some special meal her mother was going to make. She was going to use the gruzka for kompot or pierogies. Lena made no sense. She probably thought I was pretty ignorant because I didn't know what she meant. Gruzka is pear she said. I tried to say gruzka but it sounded wrong and she laughed. It was probably then that I fell in love with Lena Szymanska. Amazing as it seems I thought then about marrying her. Not a fifteen year old boy marrying Lena, who I discovered was also fifteen, but an older Lena. A Lena who would wait while I picked out a white wedding dress for her. It was crazy how much that day underneath the pear tree changed my life. I still remember asking her a question and the answer that she gave. She had dropped to her knees and hugged the tree. Why are you doing that I asked. I thought maybe it was a way of encouraging the tree to drop its fruit. But I was wrong, Lena said her parents told her that when they hugged the pear tree it brought people home. I thought it was a mad idea but I didn't tell Lena.

Improbably another year passed before I had another long conversation with Lena. Maybe she realised after that one day that she was dealing with a silly infatuated boy. My parents had no idea I was in love with the Polish girl from next door. I didn't let on. Didn't tell anyone. Not any of my friends. Nobody. I just got on with whatever I was doing. I can't remember what that might have been. Lena caught a train to school, the same train that I caught and I would watch her on the railway station talking to other girls from her school. But I was without courage and didn't once attempt to speak to her so it might have been my fault that she mainly ignored me. We had gone back to Hello. Hi.

She took a job at the local fruit and vegetable shop. She was on the checkout. I thought to myself she must add up in Polish and then convert to English. If my mother sent me to get fruit and vegetables I never went to Lena's shop though. I knew I would be too embarrassed. I would just be gaga so I went to another shop further away and my mother would always ask me why I took so long. It was the reason for Lena's next conversation. One day on the way home from school she ran up to me at the railway station and told me I could buy vegetables from her shop. I was with a friend and he looked at her like she was some sort of nutcase. Lena was no nutcase though, she was the girl I loved.

Better vegetables, better fruit she said. Just like the pear tree. And when I did go to her shop, the next time my mother sent me shopping for her, Lena said I waited for you all morning. Funny boy. Here you are. Do you want to buy potatoes, carrots, apples? We have strawberries. What do you want to buy? Starstruck, stupid. I was now sixteen and Lena had become massively beautiful. Even my friend who thought she was a nutcase reckoned she was the best looking girl on the train. Lena.

I like to think now that it was our first date. Our only date. We sat in the shop where she worked and had a milk shake. She made it too. Clever girl. She told me her life story, well that's what I thought at the time. She told me things that she could never tell her parents. She loved Australia. She would never go back to Poland with her parents who were saving up money for the trip. You could come and live with us, we have a spare room, I blurted out. Lena looked at me.

Sometime after that, I never counted the days so maybe it was a week, I heard some yelling and screaming coming from next door, from the Szymanska's. The quiet Szymanska's. Needless to say I didn't understand a word. Doors slammed, voices raised again and finally all was quiet. I sat on the back step of our house, nervous and sweating. The raised voice had been Lena's.

Now as I recall those times I didn't always see Lena at the railway station or at the fruit and vegetable shop. Often weeks seemed to pass when I didn't see her at all and then suddenly she would reappear lighting up my life, burning my candle. Hello. Hi. The sight of her was all it took. That is how it was, but when I hadn't seen her for more than a month I started to worry. I still heard Joseph hammering at night, but it was the only sound that came from next door.

Remember how I told you I had no courage? Well it's mainly true but one night when I heard Joseph hammering I went to the side fence of my house and called his name just as his mother would. Joseph. But the hammering continued and I thought what I was about to ask was a bad idea. Joseph.

Joseph was unlike Lena, that's all I will say. I wasn't short but he was unusually tall. He had long curly hair, like the Rolling Stones man he would later say, but standing next to the fence that night I had built up my courage to ask if Lena was at home. Not at home he said. I thought he might turn and go but he stayed. I guessed he knew I might have another question and he stood waiting for it. Can you tell her I said Hi?

No.

No.

Where is she? Where is she? Where is she? But I only said it once and he shrugged his shoulders. She has left neighbour. Joseph would always call me neighbour. In the shed where Joseph did his hammering was an old car that he was rebuilding and the benches were full of wooden toys of all descriptions that he made. On the walls of his shed were pictures and maps of Poland and photos of friends who still lived in Warsaw, Lodz or Krakow.

Something clicked inside my mind. I remembered Lena telling me about not wanting to go to Poland. Are you going back to Poland Joseph? No why should we he said and looked puzzled at my inquiry. I fell silent then, it was something I did easily. The questions stormed around in my mind and my impossible feelings for his sister sat unspoken on my tongue.

It is easy to see you like her. Joseph's words, not mine.

Come and hug the pear tree neighbour. See if that helps to bring her home.