A Story Snip! and Holmfirth Photos

sneak peak at Larksong!

I've been editing a few hundred words per day and rediscovering the story as I go. Here's the opening scene!

Alice left Montreal on the afternoon of Granny Cunnick's funeral.
Still in her funeral coat and hat, she picked up the carpetbag she'd stored the day before at Windsor Train Station and boarded the afternoon train to Knowlton.
She hadn't wanted to draw attention to her abrupt departure, though in truth her parents at least were hardly likely to notice; neither had seen much of anything beyond the sickbed in the past few months. Not since Granny had first deigned to inform them of her illness. By then the TB had advanced past any hope of recovery, and Granny had known it, yet Alice's parents insisted on removal from one sanatorium to another, always seeking a new doctor, new nurses, new treatments.
If Alice hadn't left the city, she'd have gone mad. Enough to start yelling, like the crazed man at the corner of Duke and Wellington streets, shouting invective against shopowners, governments, even Alice herself, as she passed him every morning on her way to her shift at the charity shop. She dropped a penny in his cap each day, and he'd subside into muttering, fidgeting as he made his way up the street. She would end up exactly like that, ranting as she was led away, if she did not – worse thought – end up stone cold like her parents, seeking a cure at the expense of care during Granny's last weeks.
Once in Knowlton, she didn't stop for supplies, but set out straightaway to walk the two miles to her grandmother's cottage by Macdonald Lake. Whether her parents approved of Granny's legacy to Alice or not, the birds needed looking after.
Granny Cunnick, before arriving on Alice's parents' doorstep, had arranged with a boy from the village to feed the birds in her aviary, and muck out the floor. But that had been two months ago. Alice had visited her every day at the last sanatorium, a week of listening to every sound from the bed, each gasping inhalation and rattling cough, bracketing the occasional intelligible whisper, always about the birds. Until the evening four days ago, after which no further breath had come.
She hefted the carpetbag from one shoulder to another as she rounded the last mile. The cool air of the July dusk was scented with apple blossom from the nearby orchards, and honeysuckle from a vine trailing along the fence of the last house before the trail opened up. She could not keep the sound of Granny's laboured breathing from repeating, over and over again, in her mind.
Far ahead, she caught her first glimpse of the falling daylight sparking off the surface of the lake; always the family had fought over who would spot the water before the others.
Her parents were second cousins once removed and Granny Cunnick had been Da's grandmother and Ma's great-grandmother. That made her--Alice had never quite worked out her own link to Granny. She'd simply been Granny Cunnick, head of the family, ever since Uncle Walter's accident off the barn roof thirty years ago. Ten years longer than Alice had even been alive; for as long as she'd lived, Granny Cunnick had been the matriarch, the mainstay--and Alice's refuge.
Thirty years of grandchildren and great-grandchildren and summers at the lakeshore. Alice had even escaped there one Christmastime, when the whirlwind of holiday time in the city – her mother's endless evening parties and her siblings' incessant social events, not to mention her father's steady stream of sporting afternoons – had left her depleted.
Cooling pies on the windowsill, attic explorations, and dockside dives of childhood had given way to garden teas and lakeside picnics as her generation entered adolescence. Granny had always attracted a varied crowd at her cottage, from young villagers to visitors from the Grand Hatley Hotel, artists up from New York, even the odd fisherman or two, each with intriguing stories to tell.
And always there had been the birds.
She'd reached the gate, and it was open, and even from the foot of the long drive she could hear the birdsong.
If she could only stay here all summer! Away from her family and her mother's ideas of appropriate stations in life, away from the empty feeling of accomplishing nothing with her years that was all the stronger now that she was no longer by Granny's side, away from...
She rounded the last curve and was brought up short by the sight of two young girls seated on the porch steps, complaining vociferously to a girl not much older than themselves, in a maid's uniform, attacking the cobwebs overhead with a rag wrapped round the end of a broom.
Alice stepped quickly behind the wide oak that shaded the gravel sweep before the house, and listened.
"But why do we need a governess, Eleanor?"
Eleanor shrugged, busy picking at a loose thread in the hem of her skirt. "Mum said we had to."
"But it's summer! I don't want to learn in summer!"
Eleanor dropped her hem and stood up. "It might not be so bad, Lucy-Goosey. Maybe she'll be fun."
"With a name like Underwood? Like a coffin." Lucy gave an exaggerated shiver, then jumped up, squealing. "Watch where you're waving that thing!" she cried at the maid, flicking madly at her dress. "Dirty great spiders! Why did we even come here?"
The maid brought down the broom with a thwack. "Two more days till that governess shows up! About time, too. If you hooligans've nothing better to do than get underfoot--"
"Come on." Eleanor grabbed her sister's hand. "Let's go look at the lake."
Alice shifted behind the oak to keep herself hidden as the girls skipped down the path.
Her parents had already seen fit to rent out Granny's house.
Far from fulfilling her passing wish to spend the summer here, she couldn't have even one night alone with the birds and her memories.
Unless...
Yanking off her mourning veil, she strode up to the porch and spoke up over the renewed pounding of the broom against the ceiling and its scampering spiders.
"Good afternoon. I am Miss Underwood. Is your mistress home?"

Work has gotten busy! Which means I'm a bit behind in blog comments and blogging in general, but it also means lots of photo posts!

Here are a few from a day or two spent in Holmfirth, Yorkshire, back in April:

A sneaky photo of a house.
I have no idea who lives here, but in my mind, this is my character Austin's childhood home.

When in Yorkshire... Sheep paraphernalia!

The Last of the Summer Wine cafe

Springtime ducklings!

Ancient cross

The moon!

Blossoms!

Ancient walls

What's your favourite kind of story opening?