Phantom Horse 2: Phantom Horse Comes Home Read online

  Christine Pullein-Thompson

  PHANTOM

  HORSE

  COMES HOME

  AWARD PUBLICATIONS LIMITED

  ISBN 978-1-84135-926-7

  Text copyright © Christine Pullein-Thompson

  Illustrations copyright © Award Publications Limited

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Illustrations by Eric Rowe

  Cover illustration by Jennifer Bell

  This digital edition first published 2012

  Published by Award Publications Limited, The Old Riding School, The Welbeck Estate, Worksop, Nottinghamshire, S80 3LR

  www.awardpublications.co.uk

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  Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  More Phantom Horse Adventures

  1

  “Come in,” called Mum, opening a window. “Something has happened.”

  I was schooling Phantom behind Mountain Farm. It was one of those lovely spring evenings which seem as though they would last for ever. The frogs were croaking incessantly in the valley and there was an exhilarating breeze which came straight from the Blue Ridge Mountains. I had been circling and Phantom was beginning to flex his neck and drop his jaw at last.

  I wondered what could have happened as I rode towards the stable which our American friends called the barn. My brother Angus appeared on a bicycle. He was having one of his non-riding days.

  “What’s happened?” he shouted.

  “I don’t know,” I answered, dismounting and untacking Phantom.

  I remembered that my parents had written to various hotels about a holiday. They had been torn between Cape Cod and a holiday in Maine, which they said resembled England. We all yearned for England sometimes when the days were unbearably hot or we were stuck in an endless traffic jam, or people laughed at us because we walked to the local drugstore.

  “They must have booked a holiday,” I replied, walking towards the house.

  “Yeah, sure,” replied Angus, who was beginning to talk like an American.

  Our parents were in the sitting-room. They each had a glass of sherry. Dad had just returned from Washington and was wearing an English suit. He looked tall and thin and on edge. Mum was looking out of a window.

  “Oh, here you are,” she said, turning round.

  I took off my riding hat. I felt nervous now. I wondered whether some close relation had died – there was that sort of atmosphere in the room.

  “Well, what’s happened?” asked Angus, throwing himself into a chair.

  “Someone has died. Aunt Agatha, Uncle George, Granny?” I guessed.

  Time seemed to be passing very slowly until Mum said, “You tell them,” and looked at Dad.

  “You may be pleased,” he said unexpectedly. “We’ve got to go home.”

  “To England?” I asked stupidly.

  “But why?” asked Angus. “I thought we were here for three years.”

  I thought of the narrow winding lanes, of Sparrow Cottage, small and dreaming, of the paddock where our ponies had grazed beneath the tall trees. We had only been in Virginia nine months, but already it seemed like years.

  “What about school?” I asked, before I thought of Phantom and felt a lump rising in my throat. “What about Phantom?” I shouted. “I can’t leave him behind.”

  “I don’t know,” replied Dad. “I don’t know why you have to collect animals wherever you go.”

  I think I had better explain about Phantom. He is a palomino, golden dun with a flaxen mane and tail. He was wild in the mountains when we first came to Virginia. He had been destined for the racetrack, but he had broken loose and no one had been able to catch him. Angus and I and our American friends, Phil, Pete and Wendy, had tried and failed like everyone else. And whoever caught him could have him. We thought of little else during our first few weeks in Virginia. Then in the winter I had found him ill in the mountains, almost too weak to walk, and had led him down from the Blue Ridge Mountains to Mountain Farm. We nursed him back to health and then slowly I had tamed him, hung sacks of hay over his back, watched him shivering with fright beneath their weight, and finally ridden him.

  “Can’t you turn him loose again?” Mum asked. I shook my head.

  “He causes too much trouble. Sooner or later someone would shoot him,” I replied. “When are we going, anyway? He’s entered for a show in May.”

  “In a month,” Dad replied. “The government has changed – there’s been an election. They want me in London. I’ve got to brief the new man and then stay on at the Foreign Office.”

  “It’s a step up actually,” Mum said.

  “He was going in the green hunter class,” I said, and my voice did not sound like my own any more. “The show is on the sixteenth. It was to be his debut.”

  “That’s all right then,” Dad answered. “We are going on the nineteenth.”

  “I don’t know why you’re so upset,” Angus said. “I think it will be nice to see good old London again.”

  I had forgotten what London was like. I had become geared to the American way of life. I had not wanted to leave England a year ago, and now I did not want to leave Virginia.

  “We get help with travelling expenses, so we might be able to take him,” Mum said.

  “You mean Phantom?” I cried.

  “He would never load,” Angus said. “He’s too nervous. He would go berserk if he saw a ship.”

  “He would go by air,” Dad replied. “But are you sure he’s legally yours, Jean?”

  I nodded. “His owner gave me a certificate of gift. He said I had sure earned him.”

  My mind was racing ahead all the time. I saw myself saying goodbye to Phil, Pete and Wendy. I might never see them again. I felt near to tears. “I don’t know why things have to change,” I cried angrily.

  “That’s life,” replied Mum. “It isn’t meant to be a picnic.”

  “Supposing Phantom doesn’t load?” asked Angus.

  “They’ll sedate him,” Mum replied, “and tie him up so he can’t hurt himself.”

  I saw Phantom being drugged, myself waiting for him at Heathrow airport; myself going back to my old school, meeting my old friends to whom I had said goodbye only last year. Our ponies would come back: grey Moonlight and roan Mermaid. They would graze again under our Oxfordshire trees.

  “The fences won’t be high enough,” I said suddenly. “Phantom will jump them.” I started to bite my nails, something I hadn’t done for ages. The future seemed fraught with difficulties. “I won’t have any suitable tack,” I said. “Everything we have here belongs to the Millers.”

  “We must buy some tack then,” replied Dad, sounding weary, “and build fences. It’s lucky the cottage hasn’t been let again yet. Things could be much worse.”

  “When shall we tell the Millers?” I asked next.

  “Tomorrow – we can ride over in the morning, it’s Saturday,” replied Angus, ge
tting out of the chair in which he had been sitting. “And for goodness sake cheer up! We’re not all going to be painlessly destroyed. I’m looking forward to seeing Moonlight again, even if you don’t care tuppence for Mermaid.”

  “Don’t be so mean. Of course I care about Mermaid,” I answered.

  “But you prefer Phantom,” my brother retorted, leaving the room.

  I could hardly sleep that night. There was bright moonlight outside, an owl hooted, and England seemed farther and farther away. I kept wondering whether Angus was right. Did I really like Phantom better than my thirteen-hand roan Mermaid? Then I started worrying about Phantom again: supposing all the planes were fully booked? Supposing no one could fit him in anywhere. What would I do then?

  Mum came into my room on tiptoe and drew my curtains. “Do try and sleep, Jean,” she said, tucking me in. “Everything will work out all right in the end.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked, grabbing her hand. “Certain,” she replied. “Dad will fix up everything. He will pull all the right strings, as he always does.” She brushed my face with her hand and went out.

  I slept, and the next thing I knew was Angus shaking me, saying, “It’s nearly ten o’clock, aren’t you getting up at all? I’ve caught Phantom and Pelican.”

  Pelican was a wall-eyed grey lent to us by the Millers. He was a strange horse. He seemed to live removed from us all in his own private world. If you held out a titbit he just ignored it. Yet he was not blind, only wall-eyed. He never grew fat either. He was stiff and unresponsive to leg aids. He was fifteen-two, and sometimes we wondered how we would feel back on our own, much smaller ponies in England.

  I got out of bed and dressed in the inevitable jeans and bright checked shirt, which came from the one and only clothes shop in the nearest town. It was hot already; the frogs were croaking in the valley. The sun looked pitiless in the endless blue sky.

  Phantom whinnied when he saw me. I tacked him up and we rode away across the valley towards the Millers’ house, standing white and imposing in the distance.

  “England is going to look awfully shut in after this,” Angus said, pushing Pelican into a canter. It seemed as if you could canter for ever. It made you feel like a cowboy.

  “Phil and Pete won’t be there,” I said.

  “I know,” Angus answered. “But we can still tell Wendy and her parents.”

  We had nearly reached the house now, with its white-railed garden which the Millers called a yard. Their white-faced, red cattle were standing half in the stream, shaking their heads against the flies. Their dogs got up and came over to greet us. It seemed impossible that we were leaving, going away, never coming back. Tears blinded me for a moment but Phantom walked on, his head high, his hoofs almost prancing over the nearly-parched grass.

  We found Wendy in the yard grooming her roan, Easter. “Hi,” she called. “I was just going to ride over.”

  “We beat you to it then,” replied Angus, dismounting.

  They smiled at one another and suddenly I felt shut out, unnecessary.

  “We are going,” Angus said. “Dad has been recalled.” He made it sound like a death-knell.

  I dismounted and loosened Phantom’s girth. Soon, I thought, all this will be just a memory.

  “Going? Going back home? But I thought you – ” cried Wendy.

  “So did we,” interrupted Angus. “But there’s been an election.”

  “Oh heck!” shouted Wendy. “You can’t go! We’ve made all sorts of plans. We’ve found you a place at Cape Cod for the summer.” She had stopped grooming Easter. She was tall, far taller than me, with hazel eyes and red-brown hair which always seemed to stay where she wanted it. Like me, she was wearing the usual checked shirt and jeans. “Can’t you stay on here? We can put you up. There’s enough room in the old place for an army,” she cried. “Your father must be coming back eventually.”

  Angus shook his head. “We’ve never been posted to the same place twice. Besides, he was due for a spell in England sooner or later.”

  “Of all the rotten luck!” exclaimed Wendy. “How about the show? You won’t be gone by then, surely?”

  I shook my head. “Not till the nineteenth,” I replied.

  “You could follow them later. Sure you could,” Wendy said. “You don’t have to go when they do.”

  “Yes we do,” I replied. “And I shall be taking Phantom.”

  “He’ll never load. You must be nuts if you think he’ll load,” Wendy cried. “Look at him; he’s still half wild. Look at his eyes, Jean. He belongs here in the mountains.”

  “I’m taking him,” I replied with a feeling of fury mounting inside me. “He’s mine. I’ve got the deed of gift.”

  “I bet you fifty dollars he won’t load,” shouted Wendy.

  “Done,” I cried.

  She looked hot and angry. She had wanted to dominate me from the moment we had met nine months ago. Suddenly I was glad to be leaving. I looked at the dry grass, at the dust rising where some cattle were stamping under a tree, and I imagined England damp and green, small and cosy in a way America could never be. I imagined meeting friends again, drinking cider with them, sitting on the lawn at home.

  “Let’s ride. You girls always quarrel,” said Angus in an annoying, grown-up voice. Wendy was too big for Easter but we rode as far as the gas line and down along the rocky bed of an old stream. It was hot even for April and I kept thinking of the long hot summer that we would never now see, and imagining Wendy and her brothers still riding along the tracks Indians had used in years gone by. Mr and Mrs Miller were out and we parted briefly at the cattle grid which led to the stables.

  “You tell your parents you gotta stay, tell them about the house at Cape Cod. Tell them you don’t want to go back to your silly little island yet,” shouted Wendy. “Doggone it, you can’t go. We’ve made a lot of plans.”

  “England isn’t a silly little island,” I shouted. “It’s the most civilised place in the world.” But she didn’t listen, only waved and rode away towards the stables, looking large and American on Easter.

  “Well, you did put your foot in it!” my brother exclaimed. “You said all the wrong things as usual.”

  “She wants her own way. She doesn’t really care about us; it’s her plans that matter.” Suddenly I hated her and Angus, everybody. I pushed Phantom with my legs and we started to gallop, on and on across the limitless landscape. I shall make her keep her word, I thought, I shall demand fifty dollars, and I imagined Phantom walking behind me into a jet, the doors closing behind us, people watching, clapping, Wendy scowling, the sun shining on the airport, home the next stop.

  2

  The next day was Sunday but we didn’t go to church. I schooled Phantom; I tried to teach him work on two tracks but I wasn’t very successful. Wendy appeared in the afternoon.

  “I’ve put this together for you. You’ll need it for the green hunter class.” She handed me an ancient double bridle as she dismounted from Easter. “It hasn’t a lip strap; otherwise it’s okay,” she added.

  Angus appeared. He was nearly as tall as Wendy and already his face was tanned by the sun.

  “Have you asked about staying here?” Wendy asked. “Just till the fall. You can stay with us. I’ve fixed it.”

  We shook our heads. We liked the Millers but their ways were not really our ways.

  “Then we’re going to visit you in the summer vacation,” cried Wendy. “We’re coming over. Dad’s booking right away.”

  I tried to imagine the Millers in England.

  Would they stay with us? How would we entertain them? And what about the food? Would they appreciate bread and honey for tea? I fiddled with the straps of the double bridle, while my brother said, “Sure, that’s great,” sounding impossibly American.

  I tried to imagine them on our ponies. I could not bear to think of Wendy on Phantom. She would lose her temper with him, jerk his mouth, terrify him for ever.

  “If Sparrow Cottage can’t take us, we
can sure stay somewhere else,” replied Wendy, sounding uncertain.

  “Of course it will. You’ll stay with us, that’s settled,” Angus replied.

  They will bump their heads on the beams, I thought, and the spare room is tiny, and what if Mr and Mrs Miller want to stay as well?

  I put the double bridle on Phantom but he still didn’t look like a hunter. “I shan’t win anything, he’s too showy for a hunter,” I said.

  “Are you coming with us in the truck?” asked Wendy. “We’ll have some room because the boys won’t be back home in time.”

  I knew their truck. It was not like a horse box, instead it had rails along its sides and no top. The horse jumped into it off a loading ramp.

  I shook my head. “Phantom might not load. It’s only six miles. I’m hacking.”

  “Hacking?” shouted Wendy. “But no one hacks around here. You must be nuts.”

  I saw myself riding along a dirt road. “It will quieten him down for the show,” I answered. “I’ll allow lots of time. Mum will bring the grooming gear in the car.”

  “Pete will be mad when he knows,” Wendy cried. “He’ll be mad at me for not stopping you.”

  I took the double bridle off Phantom. The day was growing cooler and the flies had been replaced by midges.

  “He’ll never get into your truck,” I said. “And supposing he tried to jump over the sides? You know how wild he is. If he escaped I might never catch him again.”

  “Have it your own way then,” replied Wendy. “But you could get a horse box for yourself if our truck’s so darned crabby.”

  Mum made us tea. Wendy drank hers with ice in it and pineapple juice, out of a tall glass with a special long-handled spoon which she dug out of one of the drawers in the kitchen. She ate biscuits, which she called cookies. Suddenly the sky was dark outside and everything seemed ominously still.

  “There’s going to be a storm,” she said. “I’m going before it starts.”