Rose for Winter Read Online Free

recaptured and held by Spain long before the Moors were driven out of Europe. So it stood for years among the alien spears, a scene of bloody sieges, betrayal and massacre. But it remained the outpost of the Catholic Kings and never again surrendered.
    We passed through the gateway and into the city, and the sun broke through and shone. Tarifa, within the walls, was packed as tight as a box of bricks. But the small square houses, decorated with delicate ironwork and built round tiny flowering patios, gave an impression of miniature spaciousness, a garden enclosed, an ancient perfection preserved in poverty and love.
    For Tarifa was quite obviously poor. Once a name of terror in the Straits, a nest for the sea-raiders who once dominated these waters, the city lies harmless now like a wrecked and gilded barge. But the gilt is fresh, and flowers hang bright from the balconies, and the air in the streets has the clean golden silence of perpetual afternoon.
    Most Spanish towns are lapped with noise, with wagons and motor-horns, donkeys and tinkers, and the ceaseless clamour of café conversation. But here there was an almost unearthly silence, cool and becalmed, a silence of no time. We threaded around the narrow cobbled alleys, and small dogs slept in shadows as though bred only for sleep. A few brown girls stood motionless by a fountain, unspeaking, stilled with secrets. A few dark men stole quietly through archways and disappeared into the profound gloom of shuttered patios. A few dark eyes watched us through the grilles of windows. And a solitary beggar girl, with huge dumb eyes, followed us slowly with a smile.
    I felt we had stepped aside from all the activity of the earth and entered a charmed and voiceless world, a world where people lived as hushed as plants, taking their life from the sun without a sound. The Spanish kings may well have recovered this town in 1392, but Tarifa remained almost mystically oriental, the women wore veils of silence, and the men walked cloaked in shadow and the sun.
    Down a narrow street, near an empty plaza, we ate our midday meal. The beggar child watched us through the window for a while, then, picking up a piece of charcoal from the road, began to draw pictures on the white wall opposite. She drew an ass, a lion and a tree full of birds. When we had finished our meal she came and took us by the hand and led us to them.
    As we fingered the birds and stroked the lion’s mane she gazed up at us with great eyes swimming in shadows.
    â€˜What would you like best in all the world?’ I asked.
    â€˜To sail a ship in the night,’ she answered.
    â€˜And where would you go?’
    â€˜Away, to find my father.’
    She came with us down to the seashore, and we sat together on the white sands, eating oranges and pastries and watching the long rollers coming in from the Bermudas.
    Then we said good-bye and walked out of the town and got a lift in a motor-car back to Algeciras. As we returned through the stormy mountains, a gale blowing now and rain coming on, our driver, who was a horse-doctor, spoke passionately about the loss of Gibraltar, but he said that Churchill was a good man and might hand it back to Spain any day now.
    During the days that followed, a raging storm blew up out of the Straits, accompanied by a harsh east wind. Gibraltar Rock, trailing a perpetual plume of cloud, looked like a stricken battleship on fire. The bay leapt and seethed with green and milky waves. The fishermen crouched miserably in doorways, watching their boats as parents watch sick children. And the Civil Guards drew cloaks over their noses and flapped about like wounded birds.
    Rafael, the page-boy, ran in and out of the hotel with doom on his face, his proud new uniform shrinking rapidly.
    â€˜Ay! Ay!’ he moaned. ‘What wind! What tempest!’
    I asked him if this was usual weather.
    â€˜Rare as a green dog,’ he said, shaking himself.
    It meant an end to all normal life in