Obituary

Jini Fiennes
 

         The family background of the writer Jini Fiennes, who has died of cancer aged 55, was like a living encyclopedia of theologies.  Her father, a brilliant lachrymose general in the Indian army, converted to Catholicism on the battlefield.  Uncle Bill was Anglican Bishop of Bombay, Uncle Patrick is a monk at Downside, and Jini's siblings span the spectrum of faiths.  Her sister was a card-carrying communist.  One brother found refuge from Catholicism as an archimandrite in the Greek Orthodox Church and the other (briefly a professional bridge player) renounced his priesthood in order to marry a nun, but holds the chair of Theology at Cambridge.

          Out of this maelstrom of beliefs came a writer whose first novel contained the line:  "I'm sure that love should be a constant state, nothing sudden"; a passionate wife and mother, whose instincts and enthusiasms formed the touchstone of certainty for her gifted family; a loving friend whose conversation was a source of constant delight and affirmation and a woman who, for the last years of her life, battled the "poor cancer" which consumed her, with a teasing cheerfulness that caused all of us to laugh, even as we wept.  Her coffin was painted electric blue.

          Jini Fiennes left home at 16 and published her first novel, The Burial, in 1961 at the age of 23.  She was an instinctive writer  who could neither punctuate nor spell -- as she wailed at the time:  "I thought publishers were supposed to sort all those things out for you."

            At my parents' house in Suffolk, Jini met and was courted by Mark Fiennes, a man of enormous physical vitality and presence.  We watched the courtship with love and amusement and most notably (with trepidation) the concurrent sage of her attempts to learn to drive.  My father handed over her tuition to Mark, who told me recently that "She was the most dangerous and terrifying driver I've known."

             Thus began a marriage which defied all material probabilities, in a continuing triumph of optimism over common sense.  The family grew (Jini had announced from the start that she wanted six children) and every few years they moved from Suffolk to Wiltshire, to Ireland to Wiltshire, to London and back to Suffolk again.  Mark switched from farming to photography and Jini wrote four more novels, which were published to critical acclaim but public indifference.

           The writing took place in a household teeming with six articulate children and their friends, and against a backdrop of Jini's favourite tapes, played fortissimo.  Always original, alive, funny, unconventional, Jini radiated love to such an extent that everyone felt happier when talking to her.  At moments of financial crisis, she magically found enough in her purse or bank account to save the family from ruin and in every emergency her children would ring her, to conjure good luck for them.  She was extraordinary with all the children, because she had the gift of talking to them without emotional inhibition.
 
          In 1986, Jini realised that she had breast cancer.  After the operation and lengthy chemotherapy she set off on foot by herself, with stick and backpack and a small advance from her publishers, on a pilgrimage.  Her journey around the great holy sites of France and Spain, ending at Santiago de Compostela, was the subject of her last published book.

          For a while it seemed that she had recovered but the cancer struck again, in the lungs.  Finally it was courage and love alone that enabled her, this last autumn, to dance at the wedding of her eldest son.  Throughout her illness, Jini continued to write (leaving an unpublished novel, Blood Ties, which may be her finest work) and she seemed to get stronger, more radiant, more serene.
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Simon Loftus
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Jennifer Alleyne Fiennes (Lash) born February 27, 1938; died December 28, 1993