The War that never ended for George MacLeod.
By his son Maxwell MacLeod
An extract from Rowing home by Maxwell MacLeod
“Maxie, Maxie, Maxie, wake up. Wake up! Wake up! I’ve got stories to tell you.’
It’s 4.30 on a summer’s morning in a bedroom of the Manse on the Hebridean island of Iona. The year is 1960. There is an old man and a young child in the room.
The old aged pensioner is sixty five, his son, this writer, eight. My Mother sleeps next door, writhing in the early part of her pregnancy.
“Wake up, Maxie, wake up,” The old man would whisper in my tiny ear. He had a soft and sexy voice. I can hear it yet. They make an odd couple, these two. The old man looks half mad. He is wearing a torn dressing gown, blue and white striped. The hair an explosion of white. The oyster eyes juggly, the collapsed mouth stale with dried froth, snot on the moustache. The eyes like lasers.
Meet my dear dad, The Very Rev Lord Dr Captain Proffessor George MacLeod of Fuinary. Military Cross, Croix de Guerre, Doctor of Divinity and, at this moment, quite possibly certifiably insane.
George is tall and was once elegant, though perhaps not so much now as he hasn't got his teeth in.
Beside him the slugabed child is just a tight little bundle of red curls, milky skin and ‘go-away-I’m- sleepings, Daddy’....
Maxwell MacLeod
