This is the reason why mothers are more devoted to their children than fathers: it is that they suffer more in giving them birth and are more certain that they are their own
(Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics]
the noon-day sun shone on the pale-cinnamon stone of the colleges, and the spires of Oxford looked down on a scene of apparent tranquillity as the marked police car drove down Headington Hill towards the Plain, then over Magdalen Bridge and into the High. In the back sat Morse, sombre, and now silent, for he had talked sufficiently to the rather faded woman in her mid-forties who sat beside him, her eyes red from recent weeping, her mouth still tremulous, but her small chin firm and somehow courageous in the face of the terrible events she had only learned about two hours before – when the front doorbell had rung in her sister's council house in Beaconsfield. Yet the news that her husband had been murdered and that her only son had run away from home had left her not so much devastated as dumbfounded, as though a separate layer of emotions and reactions had formed itself between what she knew to be herself, and the external reality of what had occurred. It had helped a bit too – talking with the chief inspector, who seemed to understand a good deal of what she was suffering. Not that she'd bared her soul too much to him about the increasing repugnance she'd felt for the man she'd married; the man who had slowly yet inevitably revealed over the years of their lives together the shallow, devious, occasionally cruel, nature of his character. There had been Philip, though; and for so long the little lad had compensated in manifold ways for the declining love and respect she was feeling for her husband. In nursery school, in primary school, even at the beginning of secondary school, certainly until he was about twelve, Philip had almost always turned to her, his mother; confided in her; had (so preciously!) hugged her when he was grateful or happy. She had been very proud that she was the loved and favoured parent.
Whether it was of deliberate, vindictive intent or not, she couldn't honestly say,,but soon after Philip had started at secondary school, George had begun to assert his influence over the boy and in some ways to steal his affection away from her; and this by the simple expedient of encouraging in him the idea of growing up, of becoming 'a man', and doing mannish things. At weekends he would take the boy fishing; often he would return from the Royal Sun in the evening bringing a few cans of light ale with him, regularly offering one to his young son. Then the air-gun! For Philip's thirteenth birthday George had bought him an air-gun; and very soon afterwards Philip had shot a sparrow at the bottom of the garden as it was pecking at some bird-seed she herself had thrown down. What a terrible evening that had been between them, husband and wife, when she had accused him of turning their son into a philistine! Progressively too there had been the coarsening of Philip's speech, and of his attitudes; the brittle laughter between father and son about jokes to which she was never privy; reports from school which grew worse and worse; and the friendship with some of the odious classmates he occasionally brought home to listen to pop music in the locked bedroom.
Then, over a year ago, that almighty row between father and son about the rucksack, which had resulted in an atmosphere of twisted bitterness. Exactly what had happened then, she was still uncertain; but she knew that her husband had lied about the time and place he had found the rucksack. How? Because neither George nor Philip had taken the dog for its walk along the dual-carriageway that morning: she had. Philip had gone off to Oxford very early to join a coach party the school had organized; and, on waking, her husband had been so crippled with lumbago that he couldn't even make it to the loo, let alone any lay-by on the dual-carriageway. But she knew George had found the rucksack, somewhere – or that someone had given it to him – on that very Sunday when the Swedish girl had gone missing; that Sunday when George had been out all afternoon; and then out again later in the evening, drinking heavily, as she recalled. It must have been that Sunday evening too when Philip had found the rucksack, probably at the back of the garage where, as she knew, he'd been looking for his climbing boots for the school trip to the Peak District – and where, as she suspected, he'd found the camera and the binoculars. Oh yes! She was on very firm ground there -because she too had found them, in Philip's room. Only later did she learn that Philip had removed the spool of film from the camera and almost certainly developed it himself at school, where there was a flourishing photographic society (of which Philip was a member) with dark-room facilities readily available.
A good deal of this information Morse had known already, she sensed that. But appearances were that she'd held his attention as tearfully and fitfully she'd covered most of the ground again. He'd not asked her how she knew about the photographs; yet he surely must have guessed. But he would never know about those other photographs, the pornographic ones, the ones of the Swedish girl whom she had recognized from the passport picture printed, albeit so badly, in The Oxford Times. No! She would tell Morse nothing about that. Nor about the joy-riding – and her mental turmoil when first she'd read those words in Philip's diary; words which conjured up for her the confused images of squealing tyres and the anguished shrieks of a small girl lying in a pool of her own blood… No, it would belittle her son even further if she spoke of things like that, and she would never do it. Wherever he was and whatever he'd done, Philip would always be her son.
As the car turned left at Carfax, down towards St Aldate's police station, she saw a dozen or more head-jerking pigeons pecking at the pavement; and then fluttering with sudden loud clapping of wings up to the tower above them. Taking flight. Free! And Margaret Daley, her head now throbbing wildly, wondered if she would ever herself feel free again…
'Milk and sugar?'
Margaret Daley had been miles away, but she'd heard his words, and now looked up into the chief inspector's face, his eyes piercingly blue, but kindly, and almost vulnerable themselves, she thought.
'No sugar. Just milk, please.'
Morse laid his hand lightly on her shoulder. 'You're a brave woman,' he said quietly.
Suddenly the flood-gates were totally swept away, and she turned from him and wept quite uncontrollably.
'You heard what the lady said,' snarled Morse, as the constable at the door watched the two of them, hesitantly. 'No bloody sugar!'