"Are You Ted Rowley's Son?"

“Are You Ted Rowley’s Son?”

My oldest brother paused in sipping the drink he’d just received in the hotel bar. Tim had stepped away from the wake that we, a large Hyberno-British Romanichal family, were holding in a function room a few steps away from the general use booze chamber.

The guest of honour at the wake was indeed Ted Rowley; the pater familiaris and paternal unit for 10 of the individuals that had gathered in the function room.

“I am” Tim answered cautiously

“You know he has a bunch of other kids right?” The stranger informed Tim matter of factually.

As it happened, Tim did…

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Let’s go back about three decades. Tim is around 11-12 and has just made a new friend at school. As is often the case, the new friend invites Tim to come to their home for dinner.

A couple of evenings later Tim arrives at his new friend's door and knocks. He’s greeted first by the new friend’s mother and then a gasp from the same lady, who, overcome with emotion, runs upstairs, leaving Tim on the doorstep. After a moment he sees his new friend coming down the stairs with their older brother, a boy of maybe 15 who looks just like Tim.

So yes, Tim was aware.

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My father was born in Plymouth, into the first generation of my family to not live in Vardos. His mother had lived in a Vardo from her birth until her mid 20s and my oldest aunt had been born in her parents brightly painted, both inside and out, caravan.

By the time “Teddy” came into the world, the youngest boy and second youngest of Beatrix’ children, the family had shifted their mode of living to a bricks and mortar house a few minutes walk from the coastal frontage where the Pilgrims had set off for the Americus.

You can remove the Roma boy from the caravan but that love of travelling sticks with him all the same. If you’re born near the coast you have options for travelling other than the road readily available to you.

So that’s what he did, having been a wee bit creative about his birthdate, Ted joined the navy; just in time for a war that would take him all over the world. It would also lead to him working for…well see if you can read the context cues.

My father found himself initially shifting from the military navy to the merchant marine but eventually he found himself travelling the world for a different reason. The reason stated on the visa was generally “Pipeline Engineer” and, in truth he did know his way around pipes and oil but that wasn’t really his key function in the places he was assigned.

His job required him to perform many functions. He was helped in this by an impressive gift for languages and a certain ambiguity of looks (people will guess anything but Romani). However, especially in the late 70s and early 80s nearly all of them culminated in being a sort of canary in a coal mine. Which is to say, if you saw that Ted Rowley was heading for the airport or border and you had even a faint connection to the regime that had a cordial relationship with the UK, it was probably a good idea to likewise git yourself gone.

He rolled out of Lebanon two hours before Beirut went from Paris of the Middle East to shorthand for urban warfare. He scrambled onto a plane and took a seat directly behind Reza Pahlavi as the Islamic Revolution became the new hotness in Teran. If your mind has dredged up a name constructed of two letters and a number then, well, it’s funny how that happens, he was, after all, simply a pipeline engineer…

Once an assignment was over, Ted would return to the family home where my mother would, at least for about a decade and a quarter, introduce him to the latest of his children. He would remain, cooling his heels and, during that time, setting in motion the next child that he would meet once he returned from the next assignment.

While on assignment, Ted would take photos. “Oh I bet he did” I’m sure you’re thinking but I mean on his own time. Ted didn’t live to see the invention of Instagram but he would have loved it. The pictures included landscapes, animals, fun signs, meals he loved and always, always, pictures of himself with some woman or other. The woman would differ in looks but all had one thing in common. All of the women were approximately 18 to 35. Prime child-bearing age essentially.

The joke in the family was that there were a whole bunch of kids that vaguely resemble us dotted around the globe. Even after he passed away, we joked that one of the women would show up, one of our half siblings in tow. This did not, in fact, occur, but I suspect this is more because they weren’t aware of his joining the Choir Celestial more than that they don’t exist.

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Tim thanked the stranger, informing them that he knew. This seemed to satisfy the stranger and they didn’t elucidate upon which exact children they were referring to. Tim finished his drink and returned to the wake with a surprise anecdote for all and sundry present.

About a decade later, and another wake, this time for Tim unfortunately; cancer is a dreadful thing isn’t it? My youngest sister took a moment to get some breathing room and a drink from the hotel bar. She had just ordered her drink when a voice at her side asked.

““Are You Ted Rowley’s Daughter?”