any unwanted attention at arm’s length and her virtue intact, but it was the girl’s father who was ferociously protective, and made sure no male came near his daughter. Any marriage proposals had to be vetted by him and kept at bay until the girl became of age.
The young girl would have liked to continue her education after elementary school. But life was already hard for Nikiforos, trying to make enough of a living from his little grocery shop to feed not only his wife and children but his old parents and parents-in-law, too.
‘She’s a girl, what does she need more education for?’ he said to Calliope when his wife tried to put the case for keeping Froso at school for a little longer. ‘No sense in that. When the time comes and we find a suitable match we’ll marry her off. In the meantime she stays at home with you.’
Calliope had no option but to agree. Besides, those were hard days: schools were disrupted, male teachers had to go and fight, and children who reached the age of twelve or thirteen were deemed old enough to help their families. Girls stayed at home with their mothers to learn the ways of domesticity, knowing that before too long they would be married, while most boys would either go on to learn a trade, work in the fields, or follow in the footsteps of their fathers and grandfathers as fishermen.
Froso knew better than to complain for long; in any case she loved looking after her little brother, and since she could read and write she could find all the information she desired in books, which she could access from her old school library. Once or twice a month she would take the bus up the hill and pay a visit to her former teacher, Kyria Demitra, who was especially fond of her bright pupil. The teacher would always be ready to lend her a new book to take back home, which she considered a way of contributing to the girl’s further education. It was a rare thing to find a child in those parts who was eager to learn past leaving school and formal education. Froso enjoyed these little outings, which aside from collecting her books gave her the opportunity to escape from her parents’ watchful eyes for a short while. Calliope was loath to let her daughter out of her sight, but after the first visit, when she insisted on accompanying her, and after the reassurance of Kyria Demitra that visits to the school were beneficial for Froso, she reluctantly agreed to allow the girl to travel alone; besides, apart from everything else she had to do she had a young child to take care of too now.
‘It won’t be long before the marriage proposals will start flooding in, my girl,’ Calliope would tell Froso. ‘In fact some already have,’ she’d inform her, without giving too much detail as at her age there was no need to be concerning herself with such matters. There was one young man by the name of Mitros, from a well-to-do family in the upper village, whose family had already expressed interest in her, but it was not something that Froso needed to know about just yet. Calliope and Nikiforos’s desire was to make the best match for their daughter when the time came, but this was not the time; besides, they preferred to keep their options open, and wait and see if there might be an even better offer for their girl. The Mavrantonis’ answer to Mitros’s family was that their daughter was too young for marriage but in a year or so they would be considering their proposal. ‘Virtue and modesty are the best attributes for a girl. They are as good as a dowry, if not better,’ Calliope would insist, concerned that some boy might turn her head. But she had no reason to worry; Froso was a good girl, and the family was her main concern – until a boy called Kosmas came into her life. He was a couple of years older than Froso, and a fisherman like his older brothers, father and grandfather before him.
When Froso left school she was happy with her books as well as looking after her little brother and helping her mother take care of the house. Until the moment she became aware of Kosmas, the young girl had no interest in boys and romance, or anything much else apart from her family; but this