Phantom Horse 2: Phantom Horse Comes Home

by Christine Pullein-Thompson

  “We’ll never make it,” said Mr Miller; looking at his watch. “What did I tell you, Jean? He’s no darned good. Someone should put a bullet in him.” I could feel the tears pricking behind my eyes. I couldn’t imagine Angus and myself returning without him; it was awful beyond words.

  Then I remembered something I had seen someone else doing at a show and I cried, “Let me ride him up. He trusts me.”

  Another minute and I was vaulting on his back while the driver was saying, “He’ll kill her on the roof if he rears.”

  Angus was saying, “Be careful, Jean. Jump off if he goes up on his hind legs.”

  Phantom’s coat was dark with sweat. I said, “Walk on,” in the same voice as I used when I had lunged him months ago. I felt the tenseness going out of his body and I went on talking, but I can’t remember what I said. I forgot the others completely; I could have been alone on a desert island – anywhere – I just continued talking and I sensed the others standing watching, no doubt thinking I was as nutty as a fruitcake. And then slowly he moved. I went on talking and we were on the ramp and he was still walking forward, relaxed and confident, the fear drained out of him. I dismounted inside the box and someone put the ramp up. I tied up Phantom and shouted, “I’ll stay here,” and there were cries of “Goodbye and good luck.”

  It was a five-horse horse box and most of the partitions were still up, so there was not a lot of room. I heard the cab door close and the engine start. Angus looked at me through a window in the cab and said, “Are you all right?”

  I was fighting back tears now. Someone was still calling ‘Goodbye’, and I should have been happy because the first part of the journey had begun and I was going home.

  “Sure,” I answered.

  The drive was bumpy and I knew when we reached the highway because the box ran smoother. There were slats on the sides which I could peer through and I said goodbye to the drugstore where you could buy newspapers, writing paper, cosmetics, things you buy in a chemist’s, and a host of other things, and have Cokes there too, and hot dogs, sitting at the tables in the centre of the store.

  I said goodbye to the gas station where we bought our gas – petrol – and I heard the others talking on and on in a steady drone in the cab in front.

  The drive to New York seemed to last for ever. Somewhere we all got out, except for Phantom, and stretched our legs in a side road, where small houses hid behind tall trees. Phantom kept whinnying as though he feared he would be forgotten. The driver mopped his brow.

  “It’ll be real hot in New York,” he said.

  We drove on and presently there was a feeling of evening outside and through the slats I could see people going home from work: dozens of men wearing sunglasses; women carrying shopping bags; girls in cotton dresses. Children were standing at the roadside and there was more and more traffic and larger and larger highways.

  Angus passed me some of Annie’s cookies through the window in the cab. “Are you all right? Would you like to change places with me?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “It won’t be too long now, Jean,” Mr Miller told me.

  “About another two hours,” the driver said.

  The rush-hour traffic was building up. There was driver after driver in white shirt, coat hanging up, listening to the car radio. Once I heard a train, another time a mother calling to her child. And now there were more houses and the fields were disappearing; then without warning, the suburban homes ceased and there were blocks and blocks of flats and skyscrapers and enormous gas stations. It’s New York, I thought, we’re nearly there.

  Phantom was resting a hind leg. He looked peaceful enough. There was the smell of a town outside – petrol fumes, dust, hot pavements, rotting vegetables in dustbins, sweaty humans.

  We kept stopping at traffic lights and each time Phantom raised his head a little higher and grow more restless as though he, too, could smell the town outside. He looked very handsome with his nostrils blown out and a wild look in his eyes.

  Then, at last, the horse box started to slow down. I could see grass again through the trees and low buildings, and men in uniform, and hear the roar of aircraft taking off or landing.

  “We’ve arrived,” shouted Angus through the opening. “And there are some super planes.”

  I wasn’t interested in the planes, only in one plane – Phantom’s. I felt as though I had reached a turning point in my life, what Mum would call my “Waterloo”.

  We parked by some horse boxes. My legs were stiff when I stepped out into the summer dusk. Mr Miller took us across the airport to a buffet room and I remember I kept saying, “What about Phantom? I don’t want him scared.”

  “We’ve got an hour and a half before loading time. There’s all sorts of formalities to be gone through yet. I’ll see to them while you have something to eat,” he replied.

  Wendy brushed straw off my back. Angus was still raving over the planes, looking like grey monsters parked uneasily on the runways in the gathering dusk.

  I ate two hamburgers without tasting them. Wendy and Angus talked, but I don’t know what they said. Then Wendy noticed a boy with dark hair and a lightweight summer suit. He had a smooth, sun-tanned face and looked like an advertisement for shaving cream. She whispered to me, “He’s sure cute, isn’t he?” in a perfectly audible voice, and the boy turned and smiled at us in a perfect ad for toothpaste and I felt slightly sick.

  Quite soon after that he and Wendy were talking. Angus made a face at me and muttered, “Oh, to be in England.” And then at last Mr Miller came back.

  “The horse doctor is looking at him now,” he said. “They’re going to be loaded on pallets. There’s a crowd of brood mares going too. It’s so darned humid outside it isn’t true.”

  The driver had unloaded Phantom. He stood like a wild horse, staring round the airport. His beauty made me catch my breath.

  “Gee, some horse!” exclaimed Wendy.

  “He’s passed his tests,” the driver said. “Sure you can hold him? He’s real strong.”

  “Sure.” I took the rope and we all walked together to where three brood mares were waiting patiently to be loaded, as peacefully as people waiting for a bus. Phantom neighed when he saw them and we were told to keep him away.

  “Those mares are worth more than a million dollars,” said a man unmistakably English.

  The boxes were waiting on the ground and the mares walked into them without a murmur. A man asked Mr Miller for Phantom’s certificates and Mr Miller passed him a handful of documents.

  Then Phantom started to jump about and neigh, and the mares answered from their boxes. I felt panic growing inside me until I wanted to shout, Please hurry, every passing minute is going to make loading more difficult, but the official was still talking to Mr Miller.

  Presently the driver went to the horse box and returned with Phantom’s bridle. He had difficulty putting it on, because Phantom was whirling round and round by this time and his neck was streaked with sweat.

  “I’ll ride him in,” I said before anyone could argue.

  Angus legged me up and I could feel Phantom relaxing as I walked him round and round, staring at the light of New York beyond the airport.

  A plane came in to land with a roar and he trembled all over and the reins were salt wet with his sweat. But he only stared at the plane and then relaxed as I rode him towards the box. There was a sudden silence as he walked into it; then behind me Angus shouted, “Hurray, well done, Jean!”

  The Englishman said, “I’ve never seen that done before.”

  I dismounted and found I was trembling all over from nervous exhaustion. I took off Phantom’s bridle, leaving his headcollar underneath.

  I was allowed out of the box while the dolly took it to the aircraft standing ready on the runway; the dolly was rolled on to a lift and slowly Phantom was raised to the height of the aircraft and the box pushed inside on rollers fixed to the floor of the plane. It was then clipped into position inside. We al
l sighed with relief when that was done and Wendy said, “I owe you ten dollars – or was it twenty?”

  I said, “Fifty. Forget it.” And none of us knew how to say goodbye.

  Then Angus held out his hand and said, “It was good of you to come, sir. I don’t know how to thank you.”

  Mr Miller took it and squeezed it until Angus’s face grew red with agony. “You’re welcome, Angus. Proud to have known you,” he said.

  Then I held out my hand and received the same treatment, and suddenly Wendy’s face was covered with tears and she walked away across the airport without saying goodbye.

  I ran after her. I seized her arm and said, “I’m going to thank you for everything whether you like it or not. You’ve saved our lives countless times in countless ways, and it’s impossible to thank you enough.” It sounded silly, like a bad speech on Sports Day, and it didn’t stop Wendy crying.

  “You could have stayed a little longer,” she muttered. “A few more days wouldn’t have killed you.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I thought I could hear the plane’s engines starting up behind me and Angus was calling, “Come on, Jean.”

  “See you in July and thanks a million, million times for everything,” I shouted.

  Flying always thrilled me. I was filled with a wild excitement, and a sense of achievement as I approached the plane. I thought of seeing England again and of proudly leading Phantom into the yard at home. Mr Miller had handed Angus a mass of documents in a case. “You’ll have to look after these,” he said. “Jean can only think of that darned horse. Happy landings.”

  We watched him disappearing. “He’s not walking out of our lives. None of them are,” said Angus with a catch in his voice.

  9

  It was a long time before the plane took off. We had looked at the brood mares by then. They were thoroughbreds and one had a foal at foot. Phantom was screened off from them. Two seats had been provided for Angus and me. There was a haynet for Phantom and a polythene container full of water, and two containers of food for us.

  When the plane took off at last I held him by his headcollar. We seemed to be going faster and faster and then miraculously we were airborne.

  I kept saying, “Whoa, steady there,” and I realised that other people were saying the same to the mares. It was a perfect take-off. Angus was wildly excited.

  “New York looks wonderful,” he cried. “I swear I can see Times Square and there’s Manhattan and Wall Street … There are masses of lights. There’s clouds,” he said, “but not a lot, and stars. Billions of stars.”

  We were really high in the air now. Phantom started to munch his hay, so I relaxed. I let my body go limp for the first time in hours. I was too tired to feel any great sense of triumph.

  “It’s so smooth,” Angus said. ‘“We must be above the sea now.” He kept disappearing and coming back with more information. I was fighting off sleep.

  “There’s a racehorse trainer on board,” Angus told me. “All the grooms are English. The mares are travelling marvellously. It’s practically dark and the clouds look like some fantastic ocean below us.” He opened one of the food containers and handed me a sandwich. “You don’t seem very excited,” he said.

  “It’s smoother than anything I’ve ever been on before,” I answered. “And I can’t see much from here, can I?” All my strength seemed to have gone. I only wanted to sit by Phantom’s head and wait for England.

  “There’s nothing to see at present,” said Angus, disappearing and returning, “but one of the grooms says that sometimes you can see more than one sunrise.”

  “We’ve missed one of them,” I said.

  “You mean the New York one?” asked Angus.

  I had finished my sandwich. Phantom was still eating.

  “Wendy and Mr Miller will be just arriving home in the horse box. Gee, they were great, weren’t they?” Angus said.

  The temperature was regulated to suit the horses. I shivered more from fatigue than anything else.

  “You go to sleep. I’ll watch him. I’m not tired at all,” Angus said, his eyes bright with excitement.

  I shut my eyes and almost at once I was dreaming I was in Virginia again, chasing Wendy, who kept shouting, “You hate me. I know you do. You always have,” and then suddenly it was England. The fields were full of hay bales which Wendy jumped and Mum was standing by a gate and clapping.

  I don’t know how long I slept. I dimly heard Angus talking about a sunset and Phantom pawing the floor, and English voices talking without pause as though telling their life histories. Then there was a noise like thunder and the plane seemed to tip and suddenly I was awake, sitting up, instantly aware of where I was. I leaped to my feet.

  Phantom was racing round his box and Angus was trying to put his bridle on. But the plane wasn’t flying straight any more and Phantom was standing on his hind legs and neighing. I heard someone shout, “For heaven’s sake quieten that horse,” before I snatched the bridle from Angus and threw the reins over Phantom’s head. Angus was holding on to his headcollar rope, but it didn’t make much difference to Phantom, who seemed to have gone mad. I tried to hold his ear and failed, and for an awful minute or more I was whirling round the box with him, my legs entangled in the reins.

  Then a voice said, “Let me help,” and I saw the racehorse trainer for the first time, looking sombre in a coat and hat like someone from a different world. “We’re eight miles up,” he continued. “He’ll finish us all off in a minute if he doesn’t stop. One foot through the fuselage and we’re done for.”

  I had almost forgotten what English voices sounded like. But his voice did nothing to calm Phantom, who threw himself against the side of the box and pawed the air, and suddenly I felt as terrified as he was. One hoof through the fuselage, I thought, and we are all finished. And I saw us going down into the sea, the wreck floating, while we had been sucked out into space. Mum and Dad hearing the news on television – the headlines in the papers. All this went through my mind in a flash but by then a man in uniform had appeared. “Put these on,” he said, handing us oxygen masks. “It shouldn’t be for long.”

  I couldn’t get my mask on; my hands were shaking too much. But Angus knew how it went and pushed it over my head and clipped the ends together. The racehorse trainer had put his on and I saw that he was filling a hypodermic syringe. “I’ll just give him a shot to quieten him down,” he said.

  Phantom was standing still now, looking rather drunk. His eyes looked glazed and his ears seemed to have no life in them. I put his bridle on. The plane was flying normally again.

  “It was just a freak storm,” the trainer said, slipping the syringe into Phantom’s velvet skin. “Keep the bridle on for the rest of the flight, and stay with him. It’s only another couple of hours.” He was a big man, but he moved quietly and calmly round Phantom and one could tell he had spent most of his life with horses. He left us in the box and I heard him call, “Everything under control, Captain.”

  I looked at Angus and he smiled at me. My hands had stopped shaking but I felt sick. Presently a groom appeared and told us to take our masks off. He was a small, wiry man. “I’ve never known that happen before,” he said. “Is he unbroken?”

  “No, just difficult,” Angus replied.

  I did not feel like talking. Phantom looked half asleep. He moved unsteadily and his eyes were still peculiar. Angus had disappeared with the masks and presently he came back, saying, “I’ve just seen a sunrise. It’s too late for England’s. I don’t know whose it is, but we’re nearly home.”

  The night seemed to have lasted for ever. My teeth had started to chatter. Supposing Phantom goes mad again when we touch down I thought. But looking at him, I knew it wasn’t possible, for he was too tired and dopey with the sweat drying on his sides and a faraway look in his eyes.

  “We’re nearly there,” said the racehorse trainer. “I thought I would just let you know. You’re a bit young to travel alone with a horse. I suppose they r
ealised I was aboard so we would be all right. He’s a nice little horse though, a real American I should say.”

  I started to tell him Phantom’s life history, but there was not enough time.

  “I must go now,” he said. “We’ll be landing soon. The best of luck with him.”

  “Thank you for helping us,” I replied.

  “You’re welcome,” he answered.

  I left the hold for a moment and looked out and saw England below like patchwork, the fields and houses growing larger each moment. I started to feel sick again, but with excitement this time, as though I had been away for years. Then I returned to Phantom and ate what was left of the food in the containers.

  I knew we were losing height now but Phantom seemed hardly to notice. He stood like someone dreaming and he only moved a little as the plane started to reduce speed, going lower and lower until we were on the runway, still going but no longer in the air. Then almost without warning, we had stopped.

  “They are going to unload your little horse last,” the trainer said. “I’ll keep an eye on him. You go and have a cup of coffee. He won’t be out for half an hour at least.”

  I said, “Thank you.”

  Outside the grass looked very green and the sky grey, a greyer sky than we had seen for months. The Englishmen we saw looked lean and hard compared with Americans and the parked cars looked tiny. Everything seemed small, as though we had moved to somewhere made on a smaller scale.

  “The air smells different,” said Angus, sniffing. “And we haven’t any money, have we? Not even to telephone. Oh cursed fate. And I would love bacon and eggs, wouldn’t you?”

  It was noon. It seemed impossible but somehow we had bypassed morning altogether. And then Angus cried, “Look, look over there. Beyond the barrier. There’s Mum and Dad, look!” And suddenly we were both running as though our lives depended on it.

  “It was a terrible journey,” I shouted to Mum. “Phantom nearly took us to the bottom of the sea.”