life by some fierce-looking types in the shop . . . maybe her father, uncle, brother, cousin, I don’t know,’ Keith complained.
‘Well . . . in that case you’d better watch out. They have quite a reputation, these Cretans!’ Tony laughed. ‘You’ve seen Zorba the Greek, haven’t you?’
But Keith was braver than he appeared and his crush on Eleni was greater than his fear. He did approach her, and they did start talking, and when he realized that she liked him too he made a point of chatting to the uncle or cousin or whoever was in the shop while he was spending his money on groceries. And, as it turned out, they were all perfectly friendly and polite. The fact that he took the trouble to speak to them in Greek, even if his vocabulary was limited, went a good way towards their acceptance of him. Having graduated with a first in Classics from Oxford together with three years of modern Greek, the English boy’s command of the language was reasonably good. He was something of an oddity, unlike the usual hippy types they were used to seeing backpacking on the island. The first time they heard him speak they fell about laughing, making no attempt to hide their mockery and amusement, but Keith was determined.
‘Kalimera sas,’ he said, bidding good morning to all present in his strong and, to their ears, comical English accent. ‘Poly zesti simera,’ very hot today, he continued, causing more hilarity as he looked around the room.
‘Kalimera,’ Eleni replied sweetly, ignoring her male relatives and their teasing. She was touched that the boy was making an effort. From that day he would sit and practise words and sentences from his Greek dictionary and phrase book before setting off to the shop. Eventually the men stopped mocking him, and when he suggested to Eleni that she go out with him one evening she told him that she would have to ask permission from her father.
‘I don’t want to cause offence. I know things are done differently here from the way we behave in England,’ he had said to her. ‘If you would like me to speak to your father, I shall be glad to do so.’
‘No need,’ Eleni replied, ‘it’s fine, I’ve already asked him. He’s seen you coming to the shop every day and he likes you, my brother and uncle too.’
When Keith eventually had to return to London the romance continued at a distance for several months. He wrote to her in Greek and she started to take English lessons. The following spring at Easter he returned to Crete and asked for Eleni’s hand.
‘He’s a good boy, and a teacher too, you know,’ Eleni’s mother, Calliope, told the neighbours when it was obvious that her daughter had made her choice for a husband.
‘Good for her!’ her unmarried elder sister Froso said approvingly. ‘She is a modern girl! Remember how she used to tell us when she was little that she wanted to marry for love?’
‘I do, I do!’ her mother laughed. ‘When she was five years old she announced that when she grew up she would marry that boy Georgos because she was in love, remember that?’
‘How can I forget?’ her daughter replied with a chuckle. ‘She had a wild spirit, that girl.’ Froso, who was significantly older than both Eleni and their brother Androulios, was still living with her parents in the family home. Despite offers of marriage she had always been reluctant to enter into matrimony, preferring to stay at home with her father and mother and help bring up her siblings. Now she was considered past marriageable age.
Eleni and Keith married in the village directly after the Easter celebrations, thus continuing the feasts and festivities for a few more days. The trestle tables and chairs which had been laid out in the square for Easter remained in place to accommodate the marriage celebrations. The spring lambs that had been cooking on the spits for Easter were replaced with new ones several times over for the duration. Eleni was a young woman very much loved by her community, and the Mavrantoni family was well respected, so this wedding was not going to be celebrated only by friends and relatives but by the entire village, young and old. It wasn’t every day that one of their own was marrying an Englishman, soon to be whisked away from them. The celebrations continued for three days and the music and singing echoed around the