was not decent,’ she sighed. ‘Kosmas should have done the same, he should have come for you. We would have told him that he had to wait too instead of going behind our backs and getting yourselves into trouble.’
‘He wanted to . . . it’s not his fault,’ Froso replied, her eyes brimming with tears. ‘Kosmas is a good boy, Mama, he thought Papa would refuse him, that he would think he was just a poor fisherman, not good enough for me, and that he’d put a stop to it.’
Calliope stood silently by the stove, her back turned away from Froso, stirring sugar into the hot water. ‘Well . . . there is only one thing to do,’ she said eventually, turning to face her daughter. ‘The sooner we see you two engaged, the better. It will keep you both out of trouble.’
‘What about Father?’ the girl asked anxiously. ‘What will he say?’
‘Leave him to me,’ Calliope replied.
It took Calliope several heated conversations with Nikiforos before she convinced him that this was the best course of action to deal with the situation.
‘Don’t you want your girl to marry for love like you and I did?’ she said to him, trying to appeal to his better nature when he started shouting that a fisherman’s son was not what he had in mind for his daughter. ‘You were a poor farmer’s son when you asked for me and my father didn’t object,’ Calliope shot back at him. ‘Money doesn’t bring happiness, you know that, husband. Sometimes it brings misery,’ she continued, putting an end to the conversation. Nikiforos might have been strict and fierce with his children, especially his girl, but when it came to his wife it was a different story: she knew how to handle him.
Once their love was declared and a date for their formal engagement was set, Froso and Kosmas breathed a sigh of relief and were more relaxed about being seen together in public. Christmas was looming and as it was close to the festivities the two families decided to meet together and to pledge that their two children would soon be united in matrimony.
A few days before Christmas, Calliope and Nikiforos invited the boy with his parents and siblings to a celebratory meal to discuss and agree on the union of their two families. Kosmas arrived with his mother, father and his two older brothers, Pavlis and Yiannis, all dressed in their Sunday best, the men, including Nikiforos, wearing traditional Cretan clothes, the fringed handkerchiefs around their heads adding a further air of gravity to the occasion. Pavlis, the eldest, was particularly fond of his little brother as Kosmas had taken him into his confidence about his love for Froso and their predicament. The girl too looked up to the young man and welcomed his support. ‘I say make your intentions known to the family,’ was Pavlis’s advice to young Kosmas when he first told him of the clandestine relationship. ‘I’m afraid her father would reject me,’ the boy worried. ‘What do I have to offer a girl like her?’ ‘Our good name, that’s what,’ Pavlis insisted. ‘We are a decent family, it’s not all about the money, my brother.’ But the boy was nervous and agreed with Froso, who was confident that if they waited until she was a little older, he might have a better chance of being accepted.
So on that day Pavlis was particularly happy and joyful that the young couple were finally going to be united. Calliope had killed her best and fattest hen and made an extra load of sweet festive cookies. Everyone loved her famed melomakarouna that were made from either semolina or wheat, dipped in honey and covered in walnuts, and her equally delicious almond biscuits, flavoured with rose water and dusted with icing sugar, both usually reserved for Christmas Day and the New Year. But this was a special occasion: this year they would be holding a double celebration, she told Kosmas’s family. They would herald the birth of Christ and celebrate the betrothal of their two children. Nikiforos brought out his biggest bottle of raki, as well as his best red wine, made by his brother in the village, while Froso darted about with young Androulios making the house look festive. The little boy, filled with eager anticipation, helped his sister with the decorations, paying special attention to the small wooden ship, which in place of a Christmas tree was the festive centrepiece in every home at