Free Rose for Winter by Laurie Lee

tiny figures, as though in a landscape by Breughel, scampering about in streets and squares. It was Christmas Eve, and a muttering air of holiday came up to us on bursts of the wind.
    Across the plain, and huge to our northern eyes, stood the long range of the Sierra Nevadas, half-filling the whole sky. The foot-hills climbed in writhing terraces, great granite rocks threw shadows ten miles long, and the snow peaks, crisp as crystal, flashed among drifting clouds like a string of jagged moons.
    In spite of its magnificent prospect the cemetery hill was not a popular place to live. Mourners and lovers walked darkly among the cacti and stunted olives. There was a solitary farm, high up; and here and there, though hidden among the rocks, a few brushwood hovels built by beggars. Otherwise the hill was left to the dead.
    It was therefore rather surprising to see, on the edge of a cliff near by, a large brass bedstead with a woman and child lying on it. Pots and pans were scattered about the ground, but there was no sign of any habitation near. The woman lay silent, gazing at the sky, and the small child slept at her breast. Strange and surrealist it was, the naked bed, the child so still, the woman so unconscious of us. What could they be doing, exposed on the hilltop thus?
    We were wondering about this, when suddenly, from the ground under our feet, appeared a boy with a basket of stones. He was about thirteen, very poor, barefooted, with dusty hair and a suit of clothes sewn together with string. He emptied the stones on the ground near by, and saluted us gravely.
    â€˜Where did you spring from?’ I asked.
    â€˜Out of the ground,’ he said, pointing downwards with a blackened thumb.
    â€˜That’s what I thought,’ I said. ‘What are you doing? Golddigging?’
    â€˜No gold there,’ he said. ‘Only stones. We are making a cave. Much work it is. Ay!’
    â€˜What is it for?’ I asked.
    He straightened his shoulders and lifted his head.
    â€˜It is our house. We shall live there. See my mother and sister on the bed? They are waiting to go in. Tonight all will be done. It will be a stupendous cave, tall, wide and will have a chimney. It will be the best cave in Granada.’
    â€˜Where did you live before?’ I said.
    â€˜Down there, by the river,’ he said. ‘But a bad house, full of rain and frogs. Three sisters died coughing, and the landlord took all our furniture. But the cave shall be much better, dry, with a strong roof. When we move in we shall have a feast.’
    While the boy was talking we heard a hoarse muted voice calling from under the ground. At first the boy took no notice. Then we saw a man come out of a hole and crawl on his belly among the rocks. We also saw that the man had no legs.
    â€˜That is my father,’ said the boy. ‘He is very strong.’
    He picked up his basket and left us, and it began to rain. The man and the boy crawled back into the ground, and immediately we heard the sound of the pick-axe under our feet. The woman on the bed lay waiting, making no sound. The rain fell on her face but she seemed not to notice it. The small child slept.
    In a narrow street near the Cathedral we found a cheap café called ‘The House of Peace’. And quite a find it was. For a shilling one could have soup, steak and chips, and fruit. A bottle of white wine, fetched from a near-by tavern, cost fourpence extra, and was as strong as a blow on the head. The company was mixed and noisy – mostly carters and thin hungry medical students – and in time we got to know it well.
    The house was run by a large spreading family under the nominal head of one, Don Porfino, who was a melancholic and a drunk. He never did any work at all. But among the more active members of his staff were Trini, his beautiful tragic-faced wife, who did all the cooking; his old mother, who sat all day shivering among the potatoes; Elvira, a pretty quicktongued