Phantom Horse 4: Phantom Horse in Danger

by Christine Pullein-Thompson

  “It’s always something, isn’t it?” said Mrs Barnes in a weary voice. “Don’t you ever marry a farmer, Jean.”

  Dominic ate five rashers of bacon and two eggs. “We leave at eight,” he said, buttering toast so thickly that the toast looked likely to collapse under the weight. “The abattoir isn’t opening until nine-thirty because they’ve got to get things going again after the strike. Dad telephoned them. They say they don’t buy stolen horses.”

  “You had better see about getting that tooth fixed, Angus,” said Mr Barnes, coming back. “The vet will be here directly, Mother,” he added to his wife.

  We carried our plates to the sink. I had the pain in my stomach which comes before you go into the ring at a horse show, and I was doing everything automatically, like a zombie.

  Dominic smoothed his hair in front of the mirror by the sink and put on a jacket.

  “No need for disguise today,” he said, smiling without joy. “Are you ready?”

  “I feel as though I’m going to my execution,” remarked Angus as we stepped outside.

  “It’s almost the same, only it’s Phantom’s,” I replied.

  “Now don’t you get in any trouble,” called Mrs Barnes. “Do you hear, Dominic? You’re the eldest, so I’ll hold you responsible if things go wrong …”

  The trailer was still hitched to the Land Rover, the flat tyres changed for new ones. I sat in the middle between the boys, staring at the dashboard. Dominic started the engine. The cows were going back to pasture, slowly, like old women.

  “I’m afraid,” I said. “Just terribly, terribly afraid.”

  “We are going to win,” said Angus, without conviction.

  “We can’t lose,” said Dominic, with even less.

  We passed Sparrow Cottage.

  “We should have left a message for Mrs P,” remembered Angus.

  “Do you want to stop?”

  “No, there isn’t time. We’ll ring up when it’s over,” Angus answered.

  “Will she be anxious?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Energetic men were walking dogs before driving to work. A woman was riding a bay horse. It was like any other morning; it wasn’t marked in any way, or scarred by what might happen. It was the sort of morning you dream about when you’re far away – an April morning in England with the sap rising and flowers as common as grass.

  “Let’s sing,” suggested Angus after a time, and then started droning, “Ten green bottles hanging on the wall …”

  “After this is over we must meet more often,” said Dominic. “Do you agree?”

  I nodded.

  “It’s silly to live so near one another and hardly see each other from one month to the next,” he continued. “And you both ride better than me. I can only sit on over sticks. I don’t know anything about real riding.”

  “Nonsense,” replied Angus.

  I knew we were just filling in time, trying to detach our minds from what lay ahead. We were all frightened of failure, so frightened that we couldn’t mention it, so instead we kept up a bright, pointless conversation to keep our minds occupied.

  Then, at last, Dominic turned to me and said, “Only five more miles now, Jean.” His face was pale and tense, but understanding, and I thought: He’s in this too, right up to the hilt.

  10

  We reached the abattoir. Beyond it, the riverbanks were dotted with daffodils. Dominic stopped the Land Rover. There were three cattle trucks parked outside and a horse neighing in the distance. The river was hardly moving.

  “It’s very quiet,” said Angus.

  The doors were metal, the kind which slide back.

  “Shall I knock?” asked Dominic. “No need for you to get near, Jean. Keep away. You’ll only get upset.”

  “He might be inside,” I replied. “I must look.”

  “You’ll only faint if he is. You’d be bound to,” said Angus.

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do.”

  “We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you,” I answered bitterly.

  “This is no time for bickering,” Dominic said, stepping on to the tarmac.

  We followed him, my heart beating like a revved-up engine; Angus as tense as taut wire, his face full of anguish.

  Dominic knocked and we waited for what seemed like five minutes but was probably five seconds, and they were the longest seconds of my life.

  Then a man in a white coat slid back the doors. And inside there were carcasses hanging, men cutting them into joints, innards neatly hanging from hooks on a trolley. I felt my legs turn to jelly, for Phantom could be hanging there, stripped of his golden coat, waiting to be sent to feed the lions in a wildlife park, his hooves turned to glue, his skin turned into a coat. It was more than I could bear. My eyes refused to focus any more. Then I could feel Dominic holding me up.

  “I’m all right, I’m only fainting,” I said, while my mind searched for some piece of Phantom, at the same time praying, please, God, let him be alive.

  The man must have said something, to which Angus answered, “She’s anaemic, always has been,” in furious tones.

  The abattoir man replied, “She should see a doctor then.”

  His voice came to me from a long way off. Everything was tiny and far away like when you look down the wrong end of binoculars. Then suddenly it wasn’t there at all …

  When I came to, we were moving again. I sat up. “I smell of the abattoir,” I cried.

  “You fainted. We had to carry you,” Angus answered.

  The speedometer read sixty-five miles an hour. “You mean he did – the man we spoke to at the abattoir?”

  They nodded. “He insisted,” said Dominic.

  I thought of him carrying carcasses.

  “He can’t help the work he does,” replied Angus. “Someone has to do it.”

  I asked, “Was Phantom there? Did you check? Ask if they had had a palomino in recently?”

  “Yes. And they had,” replied Angus, looking out of the window at green trees and fields where Phantom might have gone on living.

  “There are thousands of palominos in the world,” said Dominic. “It needn’t have been Phantom.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked next, wiping my eyes.

  “To Geoff Craig’s.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to kill him,” Angus replied.

  I tried to understand. “Was Killarney there, then?” I asked at last.

  “No, he wasn’t,” said Angus, suddenly adding, “I want to be sick.”

  Dominic stopped the Land Rover. Sweat was running down his face. I thought he had a kind face – but strong too – perhaps the kindest one I’d ever seen.

  Angus finished being sick and climbed back into the Land Rover. He looked very white.

  “How far is it?” I asked.

  “Another twenty miles. We’re going to save both horses. We’ve had enough. We’re going to take them home,” cried Dominic.

  “We don’t care if we go to prison. We only want to save them,” added Angus.

  “I shall go too. I want to,” I answered, imagining myself in prison clothes, a wardress with jangling keys, a cell with nothing in it but a bed.

  “You’re being melodramatic,” Dominic replied, stopping the Land Rover outside the Wee Waif Café.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “What if neither of them are there?”

  “We have no proof either way,” answered Dominic.

  “We’re going the rest of the way on foot,” explained Angus, looking at me with red-rimmed eyes.

  “And then into the hangar,” added Dominic.

  “If we can’t find the key we’re going to climb in,” said Angus.

  “And we want you to stay behind. You can send for help if we need it,” Dominic told me.

  “Phantom will only move for Jean. He’s a one-person horse,” said Angus, climbing out of the Land Rover.

  “He won’t be there,” I said.
<
br />   “Angus, you stay behind then,” suggested Dominic, as though I hadn’t spoken. “We need someone to stay behind.”

  “Not me though. I should be the one to suffer; because it was all my fault in the first place,” answered Angus.

  “Well, I must go because I’m the only one who knows judo,” said Dominic with a sigh.

  So finally we crossed the road together, before ducking under a barbed wire fence, and we felt horribly exposed as we crossed the field between us and the hangar.

  “If they look out they can see us,” Angus said.

  “We can’t run doubled up or we will look suspicious,” replied Dominic.

  “He won’t be there,” I said again.

  “Shut up!” cried Angus. “Just shut up.”

  I thought: supposing they shoot? Supposing they’re waiting for us when we reach the hangar? We were looking at the huge, grey building where the horses waited, doomed to die. And I think we were all frightened inside ourselves, though we tried to appear unafraid. Inside we were just three frightened people.

  “I’ll go for the key,” said Dominic, and was gone before we could stop him, doubled up and sliding under a fence into the yard beyond.

  I looked at Angus and saw nothing but fear on his face. I looked at the hangar. It was built of brick and breeze-blocks.

  Angus said, “They must have seen us. We were visible at least three times when we crossed the field. Anyone looking out of the house …”

  “Don’t let’s talk,” I pleaded. There was an empty feeling in the pit of my stomach and my right hand wouldn’t stop shaking.

  “No luck,” said Dominic, returning.

  “Did anyone see you?” asked Angus.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What are we going to do now?” I asked.

  “Climb in,” replied Dominic. “It’s our only hope.”

  We stood and stared at the hangar.

  “What about getting out?” I asked.

  “Ifwe get in,” added Angus.

  “We will wait till someone comes, then I’ll leap up behind you and we’ll be off,” replied Dominic.

  “What about head collars?” asked Angus.

  “There’s a pile by the door. I’ll get two,” replied Dominic.

  “Why you?” I asked.

  “Because I know judo.”

  “We’re letting him take all the risks,” I said to Angus.

  A few seconds later Angus was climbing up the hangar wall. There was a space between the breeze-blocks and the roof, and there were toeholds between the breeze-blocks, but it wasn’t easy. When he reached the top he tied the head-collar ropes to a support so that there was a loop to help us up.

  “You next,” said Dominic. “Climb on to my shoulders, then reach for the rope.”

  I stood on Dominic’s shoulders, grabbed the loop and for an awful second I swung until my feet found the breeze-blocks.

  “I’ll pull you up,” said Angus.

  I scraped my knuckles on the rough surface, then somehow I was astride the wall. Dominic was climbing easily, like someone who knew the way by instinct, while my hands felt sticky with blood. I thought of my parents. I imagined them coming back to find us dead, our heads smashed to pieces by Geoff Craig’s thugs. I wondered whether they would ever know the real story.

  “Over the top,” said Dominic, arriving beside us, “then down into the hangar. Slide and then jump. There’s only peat and horse dung below.”

  My head was bent to avoid the roof. I twisted myself round and hung for a moment with the smell of horse stronger than I had ever smelled it before in my nostrils. Then I let go and hit the wet peat with my shoulder before leaping to my feet. Almost at once I heard a whinny. Another second, and I was standing with my arms round Phantom’s neck, crying bucketfuls into his mane and whispering, “You’re alive … Thank you, God …” And Angus was putting a head collar on Killarney’s wise grey head, and I knew he was crying too.

  While Dominic tried the doors, I looked at the other horses and wished I could save them all. There was a chestnut soaked in sweat who walked up and down like a tiger in a cage, and a dun pony who nudged my back in a familiar way and then started to search my pockets for a titbit. There was a roan which had been hurt and lay with a wound bleeding on to the dirty bedding, and a foal which could have been born in the last half-hour, tottering to his feet while his mother licked him with her tongue. There was a large black horse with grey hairs round his eyes and a little bay mare with an Arab head … They all pulled at my heart-strings. There were others, too, standing together, resting legs; plain bays and browns, a funny spotted roan with a wall-eye, and three little Shetlands …

  I was still looking at them when Dominic said, “It’s no good, I can’t open the doors. No way.”

  “We’ll mount, then,” said Angus.

  I vaulted onto Phantom and wondered how long we would have to wait, my heart thudding against my ribs again.

  Then we heard the sound of glass breaking outside. It continued for some time, and after that Geoff Craig laughed and cracked a joke, and I thought I heard June’s voice say, “Well done, Dad …”

  I looked at the others. “What’s going on?” I whispered.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m scared,” whispered Angus.

  “Be ready …” said Dominic.

  I got ready like one does before a bending race, but there were no poles and no cheering crowds, just the dirty hangar and the sad, doomed horses and the two boys who suddenly looked what they were – two three-quarter-grown adolescents incapable of fighting hefty ex-convicts. My heart was in my boots. Then Angus said, “Listen,” and in the distance we heard the wailing of a police car.

  Dominic said, “Well done, Dad. He’s sent help at last.”

  I kissed Phantom and said, “Soon you’ll be free,” but I didn’t touch wood.

  We heard a car racing up the drive, the screech of brakes, and then Geoff Craig’s voice shouting, “They’re over in the hangar …” and suddenly we knew everything had gone terribly wrong.

  “I locked them in,” he shouted. “They’ve smashed all the windows, look, over there. It’s not the first time, I’m telling you. I’m sick of vandalism …”

  Then we heard the voice of a police officer saying, “It’s happening all over the country, sir. You’re not the only one to suffer.”

  I could feel the blood draining from my face, and I couldn’t look at Angus for fear of what I might read on his.

  “It’s a frame-up. But don’t worry, we’ll win. Don’t give up, whatever happens,” Dominic said. The strain in his voice terrified me even more. We heard the key in the padlock and the chain being pulled through the catch.

  “There’s nothing to be frightened of,” said Dominic, “because we’re innocent …”

  “Famous last words,” said Angus.

  “I’m thinking of Phantom,” I said. “Supposing I never see him again?”

  “If it wasn’t for the horses I wouldn’t care,” said Angus.

  The door opened and the police rushed in, dragging us off our horses, refusing to let us speak, treating us like criminals, and as we were hauled out of that ghastly hangar, we could see June watching with her father, and that was almost the worst thing of all.

  Angus looked at her and spat out one word, “Killer!”

  As I was pushed into the police car I remembered her coming to Sparrow Cottage, and how Angus had waited on her, and I could feel bitterness in my throat burning like acid.

  There were two police cars. I was put in one with an officer sitting beside me, while the boys went together in another. All I could think of as we drove away was June’s face, and I imagined it filled with triumph.

  I looked at the police officer beside me, and I said, “There’s been a mistake.”

  He said, “They all say that, love. Keep your lies to yourself until we reach the station.”

  No one had ever treated me in that way before.

&nb
sp; “It isn’t true,” I said after a time. “We didn’t break anything. We were trying to rescue our horses …”

  “Well, that’s a new line anyway,” he said after a short silence, and looked at me for the first time.

  “It’s the truth. And my father is quite important,” I added. “I’m not a hooligan …”

  “Important, is he?” asked the officer, and laughed.“ And we didn’t break the glass,” I added, my courage increasing.

  “Who did then?”

  “Mr Craig,” I answered.

  He laughed again. I thought of Phantom being loaded, tied up, driven to the abattoir; and I knew he wouldn’t go in, that he’d fight every inch of the way. It was like a small glimmer of hope.

  11

  A small crowd stopped to watch us being bundled into the police station.

  Dominic protested loudly. “I’m a local farmer’s son. I live forty miles from here. Why don’t you check up? My Land Rover is parked by the Wee Waif Café. You can easily check the registration.”

  Inside the police station we were told to wait. There were benches, a policeman by the door and no escape. I thought of Phantom. Where was he now?

  “How long will we be here?” I asked, but no one answered. The clock above the door told us it was one o’clock, later than I thought.

  “Do you think the abattoir shuts for lunch?” I asked.

  Dominic nodded. His face looked hard and strong – and dirty. Angus was biting his nails.

  “What a mess,” said Dominic after a lengthy pause when we sat and looked at each other.

  “You’re so right,” answered Angus. “I never thought the police could be so stupid. Do we look like vandals?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen one,” I said. “I’m thinking about Phantom, about him dying, because they won’t keep him now.”

  “And Killarney, and about it all being my fault,” replied Angus.

  “It’s no good crying over spilt milk,” said Dominic. “Why don’t they hurry up? One call to my father and the whole thing could be cleared up in minutes.”

  “Exactly,” cried Angus.