The Death of a Clerk in Holy Orders

I created St Dunstan’s Hospice so that Alasdair died in comfortable surroundings. The description is inspired by the film The Quartet starring Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay, Pauline Collins and Billy Connolly. Here is an extract:

St Dunstan’s Hospice was a large and imposing stone-built house, set in several acres of parkland just a few miles north of Harlow Carr Gardens. His room was small, not dissimilar in size to his college room at Peterhouse, Cambridge. There, the similarity ended as this tiny room oozes cosiness and prettiness. It had large full-length windows filling one end of the room, so that he could look out at the garden and valley beyond while in bed. It had a small two-seater sofa and coffee table to one side and a wing chair to the other. The wallpaper and curtains were a matching pretty pale blue Toile de Jouy. One of the scenes showed a small boy with a fishing net over his shoulders; another depicted two lovers having a picnic. The bed linen was pure white cotton, cool to the touch, and the pillow had the fragrance of lavender. Someone had understood how important such things are to someone feeling so poorly.

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