Phantom Horse 3: Phantom Horse Disappears Read online

  Christine Pullein-Thompson

  PHANTOM

  HORSE

  DISAPPEARS

  AWARD PUBLICATIONS LIMITED

  ISBN 978-1-84135-927-4

  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

  Chapter 13

  More Phantom Horse Adventures

  1

  We had just returned from school. Angus had thrown his briefcase down in the hall. Outside, the garden was full of flowers, the lawn peppered white with daisies, and yellow roses bedecking the side of the cottage. The ponies were standing nose-to-tail in the paddock. It was one of those days when it seemed impossible that summer would ever end.

  “Dad wants to talk to you in the dining room,” Mum called. “He’s come back early. There’s going to be another upheaval.”

  “Oh, no!” I shouted. “We’re not going to have to move again?”

  “I’m still doing my exams,” Angus said.

  “And Moonlight is going to foal next week,” I added. “And what about Phantom?”

  “They’ll survive,” replied Mum.

  “But we’ve only been back from America a year,” I said.

  “Come in and stop arguing,” called Dad from the dining room. He was pacing the carpet, his hands plunged deep in his trouser pockets. He had already changed out of his London clothes. He looked on edge, like a horse lining up for a race.

  “We’ve made plans for the summer,” said Angus. “Moonlight’s expecting.”

  “I’ve got to go to Nigeria,” replied Dad. “I know it’s a bore. But there’s been a kidnapping. I’ve been asked to take over the negotiations.”

  “You mean the one in the paper?” asked Angus, suddenly serious. “The one everybody’s talking about?”

  I stared at Dad. For a moment I couldn’t speak. Then I said, “But supposing you’re kidnapped? What then?”

  “I shan’t be. I shall have special protection. But they won’t be responsible for you two, so you can’t come. That’s the problem.”

  “It doesn’t matter. We will be all right here with Mum,” I replied quickly. “Though we’ll be worried about you, of course. We’ll help with the washing-up and dig the garden, and we won’t do anything silly while you’re away. I promise.”

  Mum was staring at the carpet as though all the answers to everything were there. Without looking at her face I knew that she was upset.

  “I won’t even ride in the horse trials if you like,” I continued with a choke in my voice, knowing how Mum hated me jumping fixed fences. “I’ll ride Phantom quietly and sensibly. We’ll both be sensible, won’t we, Angus?”

  My brother, with his dark brown hair and brown eyes, was looking thoughtful. “I wouldn’t mind going to Nigeria. I think you’re jolly lucky, Dad,” he said.

  “Mum’s coming too; not at once, but quite soon. I’m leaving tonight,” said Dad, turning to face us both for the first time. “I’m flying from Heathrow.”

  I looked at Angus.

  “We’ll be okay on our own. I’m of a responsible age now,” he said. “Nothing awful can happen to us here.”

  “Your Aunt Nina has promised to come until Angus finishes his exams,” Mum told us, “and then you’re going to Ireland. My cousin is going to have you to stay. She’s very nice. She lives in the wilds and has a girl about your age. She wrote at Christmas saying, ‘Visit at any time. We never see you,’ so we’ve taken her up on it. We phoned her an hour ago. It’s all fixed up.”

  “What about the ponies?” I asked. “I can’t leave Phantom.”

  “He’s going, too,” replied Dad. “Mum is arranging everything. You’ll leave before the end of term. Heavens, look at the time. I had better finish packing. I envy you; it will be so peaceful and the fishing is marvellous. Besides, you can talk horse till the cows come home.”

  My mind was in a whirl. All my plans for the summer had been swept away as easily as chalk off a blackboard. I imagined rolling hills, banks and a peaceful river.

  “Cousin Mary married someone we didn’t like,” Mum said. “Now she and her daughter are on their own and rather lonely. I expect she will be glad of company.”

  I saw myself leaping across banks on Phantom. We might even get in some horse shows, and somewhere in Ireland there must be a horse for Angus. I started to feel better. I looked at Mum and saw that she was smiling. “Please don’t be kidnapped,” I said. “It would be too awful for words.”

  “Don’t worry, I shall be all right,” Mum answered. “They’ve got their man already. They’ve made their point.”

  I changed out of my school dress into jeans and a shirt and went out to the paddock. The sky was still blue except for a few small fluffy clouds floating like whipped egg-white in the sky. Birds were singing quietly as they do in the evening. Somewhere a cow was lowing.

  I put my arms round Phantom’s neck and told him about Ireland. He licked my pockets and nuzzled my hair. “We will be back here in time for the apples,” I told him. “I expect you’ll have to fly again. Please behave yourself this time.”

  Last year we had brought him home from Virginia, USA. We had flown from Kennedy airport and he had had to be sedated for the journey. For one awful moment it had seemed that we were all going down into the Atlantic. It was a moment I would never forget; a memory which would haunt me all my life.

  Moonlight would be foaling soon. I hoped that she would have a grey like herself. It would be Angus’s foal. My old pony, Mermaid, had promised to be the nanny, or so Angus said. He looked at Moonlight night and morning. “You must hurry,” I told her now, “because soon you will have to go to the farm. We will be gone.” She looked very peaceful, as though she had everything she wanted in life, whereas Phantom was as restless as me: nudging me, gazing into the distance, looking for new fields to conquer.

  Mum was calling me from the house. “Are you coming to Heathrow to see Dad off?” she called. “Because you had better change.”

  “All right,” I shouted back. “But must I change? Won’t jeans do?”

  Heathrow was full of people. Dad’s secretary was already there with a briefcase full of papers for him. “Will you excuse me for a few minutes, Mrs Simpson?” she said. “I must just explain a few things to your husband.”

  We stood looking at the bookstalls and I had a lump in my throat which wouldn’t go. “I hate airports,” Mum said to us. “They give me the shivers.”

  Dad and his secretary, Meli
nda, rejoined us. “Your plane leaves from gate number eight,” she said presently. “Here are your tickets. You just need to check in your baggage.”

  “Now don’t worry,” Dad told us later over a cup of coffee. “I’m well briefed. I shall have a detective with me on and off. I shall be perfectly safe.”

  “Touch wood,” muttered Angus.

  Passengers were now boarding his plane. We watched him go through gate number eight and waved. Mum said, “That’s it. Home, James, and don’t spare the horses!”

  “I wish we could see him take off,” Angus said.

  We found our car in the carpark and Mum drove home. The sun was setting above the Chilterns and everything looked indescribably beautiful – the hedges white with hawthorn blossom, the chestnuts white and pink, and the fields deep in lush, green grass. Nigeria will be very barren after this, I thought. Poor Dad!

  Angus went straight to the orchard to look at Moonlight; presently I heard him calling, “She’s foaled! It’s trotting about! She’s done it all by herself. She’s foaled …”

  “It’s very early,” called Mum, rushing outside.

  “We should have put Moonlight by herself.”

  “It’s all right. It’s a filly,” shouted Angus.

  I ran to the orchard. The foal looked tiny, and was still wet and a little unsteady on her legs. She had a long, delicate head and small ears. Mermaid was keeping Phantom away. He stood alone under an apple-tree, not daring to approach nearer.

  “That’s another bridge crossed,” said Mum in a satisfied voice.

  “I shall call her Twilight,” Angus told us, “because she was born in the evening, which is most unusual according to all the books I’ve read on the subject.”

  I looked at the tall chestnuts. There was a pigeon in one cooing over and over again. It was a peaceful sound. Everything was peaceful. “I wish we could stay here for ever,” I said.

  “I wish Dad wasn’t in the Foreign Office. I don’t want to leave Twilight,” Angus replied.

  “You’ve got a little longer,” Mum said. “And be polite to Aunt Nina. You know the country bores her stiff, so make allowances.”

  I thought of Aunt Nina; she wore strange hats and false eyelashes and talked endlessly about embassy parties. She was Dad’s sister and worked in the Civil Service.

  “She’ll hate us,” Angus answered. “I don’t see why she has to be here. We’re old enough to be on our own.”

  Mum sighed. “Just be tolerant,” she said. “Please.”

  We ate supper in the kitchen watching Twilight through the window. And we made plans: endless, impossible plans. Phantom was going to compete in horse shows all over Ireland. Angus was going to find his ideal horse and call it Tralee. We were going to grow fat on Kerry butter and milk fresh from the cow. I imagined a Georgian house at the end of a long drive, green fields fenced by banks, posts and rails; and horses everywhere of all shapes and sizes. And suddenly I didn’t mind going any more.

  “There will be turf fires,” said Mum, “and Irish whiskey – which you are not to drink – and you’ll go to the races, I expect. And no one dresses up in Ireland, or hardly ever. You’ll love it.”

  It was dark outside now; a warm dark night with no noise beside a gentle breeze stirring the leaves of the trees.

  We talked for ages, all through the washing-up and afterwards drinking mugs of hot tea, because none of us felt like going to bed, until at last Mum cried, “It’s a quarter past eleven. What are we thinking of? It’s school tomorrow! Go to bed at once. Run. You’ll never get up in the morning.”

  My room smelled of the fresh and clean night air. It was a small, friendly room with a bed, a chest of drawers, a table and chair and nothing much else. I had a row of china horses on my chest of drawers, each named after a famous showjumper, and a photograph of Phantom on my bedside table.

  Lying in bed, I imagined us riding from dawn to dusk across green hills; Phantom growing fat and sleepy; a house full of hunting whips and sporting prints. The moon was sending trickles of silvery light through my bedroom curtains. Ireland may be beautiful, I thought, but it can’t be more beautiful than here. Then, without another thought, I slept.

  The weeks passed very quickly. Angus was working hard for his exams. Mum bought clothes for Nigeria. We booked our tickets from London to Ireland. Mum arranged for Phantom to go by a horse box which was travelling to pick up three brood mares from a studfarm near Dublin. The blossoms fell off the apple trees and lay like a pink carpet in the orchard. The longest day of the year came and went in a blaze of sunshine.

  I didn’t want to go to Ireland now. It was no good pretending any more. I wanted to jump Phantom at all the local shows, to try him in combined training competitions. I schooled him endlessly, circling him beneath the tall trees, halting and saluting an imagined judge, and Oxfordshire seemed the most beautiful place in the whole world.

  Mum had had her hair done and was ready to go, standing cool and immaculate in a lightweight, uncrushable dress. In silence we waited for Aunt Nina to arrive. I couldn’t speak, but Angus talked incessantly.

  “We will write to you once a week,” he said. “Please don’t forget to buy me lots of postcards for my collection and bring me back some coins and stamps. You won’t forget, will you?”

  Aunt Nina had pulled up outside in her red sports car. As usual she was late. “Come on,” she called, “or we’ll never make the airport.”

  She was wearing dark glasses and a silk dress. Mum got in and sat beside her, Angus and I climbed into the back of the car and Mum’s luggage went wherever there was space for it. The lilac was out by the front gate and there was a squirrel running across the lawn.

  “All set?” cried Aunt Nina. “We’re off!”

  She talked to Mum all the way to the airport about dull things like whether the sheets needed changing and where she could get her nails manicured. I had a knot in my stomach because Mum was going; and I was thinking, supposing Phantom won’t load, or Cousin Mary hates us?

  The road was up outside the airport and we got caught in a long line of cars.

  “Dad got some Irish money for you. It’s in the top corner of his desk. If you need any more, ask your Cousin Mary, and we’ll sort it out when we’re back,” Mum said, turning round to smile at us.

  “I’ll see they remember. Don’t worry,” replied Aunt Nina, hooting loudly at a cigar-smoking businessman in a Porsche who was trying to edge round us. And then we were at the airport, watching Mum check in her baggage.

  “You will write, won’t you?” I asked.

  “Of course, and I’ll ring you when I arrive. Don’t worry,” Mum answered. Her flight was boarding and already there was no time to talk. Her luggage disappeared.

  “Be good,” she said. “And don’t worry about us. Look after yourselves. We should be back in three weeks or four at the longest.”

  She kissed us both, and Aunt Nina, on the cheek and went through the gate without looking back. I wiped a rush of tears off my face and we went outside into the sunshine again, feeling as though we had lost something which could never be replaced.

  “I wish Dad would change his job,” I said furiously. “The summer’s ruined, absolutely ruined, and it will never happen again. Next year I shall be too old for half the children’s classes. It isn’t fair. And Phantom’s just beginning to go really well.”

  “There are more important things in the world than horses. Learn to play the piano, study a foreign language. Look where languages have got us,” replied Aunt Nina smugly. “If I didn’t know five languages I wouldn’t be in the Civil Service, and your father would be earning half what he does now. We studied every morning all through the holidays.”

  “I don’t care about money,” I answered. “I would rather have Mum and Dad at home any day.”

  Outside the airport another traffic jam awaited us. “I missed a party for this,” complained Aunt Nina. “I was invited to the Australian Embassy.”

  “The roads are empty
in Ireland,” observed Angus. “We’ll be able to ride without fear. Think think of that, Jean. And Dad says I can choose myself a horse, and when we come back Twilight will be quite big.”

  “And the summer will be over,” I replied bleakly. “All the shows, the holidays … absolutely everything.”

  “There is summer in Ireland you know, and horse shows for that matter,” replied Aunt Nina, “though I can’t say it’s my cup of tea. I like central heating and the latest of everything. Ireland is horses and dogs, hunting, shooting and fishing, plus lots of Irish whiskey. Just right for you, Jean.”

  Later she sat on my bed talking. “Don’t you brush your hair at night?” she asked. “Look, it’s all tangled, and your pyjamas are missing a button. Tomorrow I shall buy you a nightie, something really feminine to take away with you, and a pair of fluffy bedroom slippers.” She looked inside my clothes cupboard. “You’ve hardly any dresses, either,” she continued. “And nothing pretty. You must try and grow up, Jean. You can’t be a little girl for ever.”

  I couldn’t explain how I felt: that childhood was like a long summer which I didn’t want to end; that life was perfect as it was. Instead I said, “I feel comfortable in jeans and I like my two dresses, and anyway no one dresses up in Ireland, except in Dublin, or for hunt balls – and I don’t expect to go to either.”

  Aunt Nina sighed. “Sleep well,” she said. “And wake me with a nice cup of tea. I’m not at my best in the morning.”

  I could hear her talking to Angus next door in French. She kept saying, “Bon, bon. Très bon.” Then she said in English, “I don’t know why your parents don’t send you to France. Jean needs to grow up and you could do with some French conversation.”

  I fell asleep and dreamed that Aunt Nina was looking at me. She said, ‘Grow up, wear false eyelashes,’ and then she fetched hers and they were the colour of Phantom’s tail. She stuck them onto my eyelids and suddenly my neck started to grow. When I looked in the mirror I had become a giraffe.