Kiomi Romani
The caravan in which Fidelis was born was a red Reading van, decorated with colourful carvings of grapes and vines, and with panels of stained glass in the roof and top gate windows.
Inside was a bed, a side bench, an anthracite stove (see the chimney) and a little sink. Fidelis slept in a red canvas carry-cot which slid under her parents’ bed. The Great Dane, Gunther, slept in the middle of the floor.
Within weeks Fidelis was whisked off to Liverpool to meet half the family, then across the Irish Sea to Dublin to be baptised in the church where her parents had married a few years before.
Kiomi Romani painted by SJ Gill
Fidelis in her red carry cot, painted by her mother from the adjacent bed.
Kiomi Romani in the late 1950s
Fidelis’s christening party in Dublin, Father, Mother, Aunty Maud and the priest, who only has eyes for the cake.