My aunt was a nun. Even she read Jilly Cooper’s bonkbusters

My aunt Bridie was a nun. 

Coming from a poor, rural background in 1950s Ireland, opportunities were limited. It was not uncommon for the bright young men and women of that time, who were not going to inherit anything, who couldn’t be supported by hardscrabble farming, and who may simply have fancied a life away, to go into the church.

A couple of Bridie’s sisters emigrated to Philadelphia. Bridie took holy orders, moved to England and, becoming Sister Martina, committed her life to Christ. She worked in an orphanage in Leeds for a time before training as a teacher. 

My views of nuns are slightly coloured by attending a convent school. The nuns teaching us there were not bad, but they had a rather unique way about them – you would not cross them. That said, there remain few things funnier than two nuns, in habits, in the front seat of a small car, staring ahead with focus, burning through the revs as they gain speed but refusing to change out of second gear. Thank god for that abiding image.

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I liked Bridie. She was kind and always seemed to be making gifts for me. Time with her as an adult was short. She died suddenly and prematurely, just over 20 years ago. It was an accident. She slipped and fell, banging her head on the back step of the order’s house. And that was that.

The thought of her came back when I learned of Jilly Cooper’s death last week. It was partly because of the similar way they went, but there was something else too. Following Bridie’s funeral, my parents went to the order’s house, somewhere near Leyland, to help pick up Bridie’s personal effects. While she was being brought some tea, my mother looked around the living room and her eye settled on the bookcase.

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There were some religious books, as you might expect. But more than that, there were a number of Danielle Steele and Jilly Cooper novels. I’m not clear on which ones – that detail has been lost to the ages. But the fact that the shelves were brimful of bonkbusters has always filled me with hope. 

It shows that defined boxes into which people are placed, particularly people of faith, are wrong and limited. We all contain multitudes. I don’t know if Bridie read the books, but given the journey her life took, from the hills of south Derry, to inner-city northern England and across other challenges in Kent and back up north, she would have not been inured to life’s challenging realities. She was not cloistered, and maybe because of that she was never, it seemed to me, judgemental or dogmatic.

This is the truth for many people of faith. In a time of an attention economy, when much is performative and some people feel the need to state, angrily, what they are, as if that makes them better, emphasising lines and pious guardrails between them and others, that only promote division, good people go quietly about their business, occasionally, maybe, reading Rivals. And in them, in the places of similarity rather than difference, agreements can be reached. 

I don’t want to oversimplify the mass of complexities that surround us. But sometimes the nice thoughts about a dead aunt are useful.

Jilly Cooper is clearly a force for good.

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