Phantom Horse 6: Phantom Horse Wait for Me

by Christine Pullein-Thompson

  Angus was stacking the plates now. He suddenly seemed to have grown older and more sensible.

  “Dad’s going to be hours with the Special Branch. Do you think we could go and look at Marli, because if she’s dead we must get the horse slaughterers,” he said.

  “Yes, and poor Maggie must be so upset,” I agreed. “We must go.”

  “You can stay here if you like,” Angus said.

  “I want to go. My back is hardly hurting. I’ll just swallow a couple of painkillers,” I told him, standing up. My legs were wobbly, so I opened the tablet bottle, took out two tablets and swallowed them with water.

  “What if Rachel wakes up?” I asked.

  “She won’t; she’s dead to the world,” said Angus.

  “I’ll just look and make sure,” I said, creeping upstairs and looking into our tiny spare bedroom where Rachel lay sucking her thumb like a small child. I went downstairs again and out into the garden.

  “Rachel’s all right,” I said, getting into the car with difficulty. “She looks years younger: quite different, actually.”

  “Like she was once,” Mum said, starting the engine.

  It was almost dark, but the lights were on in Hill Farm House and there were police cars parked in the drive.

  Angus had brought a torch.

  “We mustn’t be long,” Mum said.

  “Why don’t you stay in the car, Jean?” suggested Angus. “You know you’ll only cry.”

  “I’m all right,” I replied obstinately, trying to ignore my aching back. Then I started to call, “Marli, Marli, where are you?”

  Angus said, “You’re crazy. She’s dead. We are looking for a corpse.”

  I said, “Do you think Maggie is dead, too?”

  “Don’t make such a noise. We don’t want the police out here,” Mum told us.

  Then I heard a movement in the grass and I thought: It’s Maggie! but then I saw neat chestnut ears and a large eye and I said, “She’s not dead after all!”

  I held out my hand with a piece of bread in it and Marli took it.

  “Thank heavens for that!” exclaimed Mum.

  I held my breath while Marli took another piece of bread and Angus shone the torch on her and we saw that she was quite unblemished, while Maggie stood behind her like a humble servant.

  “He must have done it to frighten Rachel. To make her turn back,” said Angus, who is not short of imagination. “What a wretch!”

  We went back to the car. I was crying again, half with joy, half exhaustion.

  “We’ll have to wake up Rachel and tell her,” Angus said.

  “Not tonight. I can’t stand any more tears. I’m totally exhausted,” insisted Mum, turning the car. “Tell her in the morning.”

  “Not if she’s awake,” said Angus.

  “Please God she isn’t,” replied Mum.

  The Special Branch men were leaving as we arrived home. Killarney whinnied to us from the paddock.

  “Well, what happened?” Mum asked Dad.

  “It’s all right. We’re in the clear.”

  “Will they go to court?” asked Angus.

  “Yes, of course, but thank God we got them in time. Thank God you didn’t let them catch you, Jean. I don’t know what I would have done if they had. I really don’t,” cried Dad.

  “Gone to the police, of course,” said Angus.

  “I don’t know. I suppose so. But it wouldn’t have been easy,” Dad said suddenly, bending forward to kiss me. “My God, it wouldn’t have been easy. But Jean was too smart for them, weren’t you, Jean?”

  “No, it wasn’t like that. It was Phantom who saved me. He was fantastic. But then he is fantastic, whatever you say. A horse in a million.”

  “Let’s go to bed. I’m drooping,” suggested Mum. “We can sort everything out in the morning. What’s that man doing at the gate?”

  “He’s guarding us, just in case,” Dad said.

  I do not know how long I slept. I woke to the sound of Angus singing tunelessly below my window. The sun was shining outside and I opened my window to call, “Why didn’t you wake me? How is Rachel?”

  “Still asleep, and her granny will be here by lunch time.”

  No one was guarding our gate any more and everything outside looked serene and beautiful.

  “No telephone calls?”

  Angus shook his head. “You’d better get up and help Mum. She’s trying to clean up the house,” he said.

  “Why don’t you help?”

  “I’m a boy.”

  “Chauvinist,” I yelled, shutting my window.

  My back still hurt and all the muscles in my legs were aching from the effort of riding Phantom bareback. After a quick hot shower I struggled into shorts and a shirt then pulled a comb through my hair.

  Mum was sweeping the stairs. “Rachel’s granny will be here soon, and look at the place!” she wailed.

  “What does it matter? It looks all right to me, anyway. And at least we aren’t spies,” I replied.

  “But look at the dust!”

  “Mrs Parkin will be here tomorrow,” I reminded her, looking for something to eat in the kitchen. “It’s no good keeping a dog to bark and barking yourself.”

  Munching bread, I telephoned the Carruthers.

  Alison answered. “Phantom’s improving, but homesick. You’ll be able to have him soon,” she said. I thanked her over and over again, then went outside to see Killarney who was standing in the stable half asleep.

  Then Mum called, “Rachel’s up. She wants to talk.”

  I went inside and found her sitting at the kitchen table.

  “I hear you saved my life,” I said quickly. “Thank you. Marli isn’t dead. We saw her last night.”

  “I don’t believe it.” Rachel’s hair was uncombed and her tee shirt was on back to front. “You’re lying. I heard the shot.”

  “He was trying to frighten you. I promise you she’s all right,” said Angus, standing in the doorway.

  “How do you know?”

  “We went and looked,” I answered.

  “And Phantom?”

  “He’s alive too – just,” I told her.

  “And my parents, my so-called parents?”

  “They’re still in custody,” replied Angus.

  “I don’t care. I don’t care anymore. I put up with everything until I heard that they were plotting to kidnap you, Jean, and my stepfather said he would shoot Phantom if it was necessary. ‘I’ll send her father one of his ears,’ he said. ‘And you won’t stop me, Rachel, because if you try to I’ll kill Marli.’”

  “I would try to forget it,” suggested Angus, going to her, putting a hand on her shoulder.

  “I shall …”

  “When did it start and how did you know?” Suddenly I was consumed by curiosity but at the same time I was seeing one of Phantom’s ears wrapped in newspaper, pale gold, severed, bloodstained.

  “Right from the beginning. They told me to tell Mrs Parkin I was lonely. They had a whole folder on you. I had to make friends with you and get the key and my stepfather promised me a horse in return,” she said. “At first I didn’t think it mattered so much. I didn’t think the plans were that important,” said Rachel, beginning to cry.

  Angus made mugs of strong coffee for us and we all sat round the table drinking.

  “So it was your father who was the burglar?” Angus said.

  “That’s right. I told him when you were going to be out. It was that simple,” replied Rachel. “He had your key copied and got in quite easily. Actually I quite enjoyed it at first, and then, when I started to like you, I hated it. Then I got Marli and you were so kind I wanted to kill myself,” she told us, “I kept thinking of ways of doing it, but I wasn’t brave enough … Then I had to put something in your telephone receiver and that made me feel ill, really ill, and I wanted to die. I could never be a spy, I know that now. I was always in your house and you didn’t seem to mind – it was extraordinary.”

  “But then
David Winter isn’t your father, is he?” asked Angus gently. “And you had a key to our door, is that what you just said?”

  “Yes, my stepfather took an impression and we had one cut, and you didn’t seem to notice. You seemed so thick.”

  “We did notice, but things happened so quickly. I think Dad suspected something all along,” I said. Suddenly I felt proud, and afraid at the same time.

  “The case will be heard behind closed doors, so not much will come out. Dad won’t even be named,” said Angus.

  “By the way, where is he?” I asked.

  “Gone to London on the early train.”

  “Poor Dad.”

  “I tried to warn you in lots of ways, but you didn’t seem to understand,” Rachel said.

  “I think we knew deep down inside ourselves,” I said.

  “And I was so jealous of you, Jean. I still am,” confessed Rachel, putting down her mug.

  “Jealous of me? But I’m such a country bumpkin. As Angus once said, if I went to the Ritz I would spill oats on the carpet.”

  “So what?” asked Rachel.

  “People always want to be what they’re not,” said Angus, going red.

  “I don’t want to be the way I am. I would like to live in Sparrow Cottage, and have parents who have stayed together: my very own mother and father. I don’t care how I look. It’s only a disguise. I hate myself really,” continued Rachel.

  I could think of nothing to say. There was a short silence until Angus said, “Well, I like you the way you are.”

  I said, “But there’s no swimming pool at Sparrow Cottage.”

  “Damn swimming pools. Who wants a swimming pool?”

  “But —” I began again.

  “It’s all buts, isn’t it? But I mean what I say. I hate being Rachel Finbow, though I would hate being Rachel Winter even more. And I don’t want to live with my grandmother.”

  I thought, don’t cry, Rachel, please don’t cry.

  Angus said, “Life goes in stages like the seasons, perhaps you’ve been going through winter and now it’s going to be spring.”

  Suddenly I saw how lucky we were, with ponies, parents and Sparrow Cottage and, as I washed up our coffee mugs, I vowed I would never grumble again.

  “I know you thought my parents were marvellously hospitable, Angus, but they weren’t really. It was all for a purpose. They never give anything away for nothing,” said Rachel, going into the garden.

  Later Rachel’s granny arrived. She was large and kind with two little terriers who yapped incessantly. She kissed Rachel saying, “You look terrible, you poor girl.” Mum gave her sherry and they sat drinking while Angus and I went outside and talked to Killarney.

  “She’ll never get over it; she’ll be scarred for life,” he said.

  “I always suspected she was pretending. She never meant anything she said,” I told him, patting Killarney’s dapple-grey neck.

  “It must have been so terrible for her, so absolutely terrible,” exclaimed Angus. “Think of the choice she made to save you.”

  “And England. After all, her first father died for England defusing a bomb,” I told him.

  Everything smelled wonderful – of flowers, horses, and mown grass from the house next door. I wanted to lie down and kiss the ground because we were still alive and it was summer.

  Then Mum called us in and we all sat round the table in our small, cramped dining room and feasted on cold meats, salad and potatoes with mint sauce, followed by apple pie made out of the first of our windfalls, and cream.

  I looked Rachel’s granny straight in the eye and asked, “What about Marli?”

  “I’ll make arrangements for her to stay at the stables nearby, but Rachel will have to continue her studies or find a job. There’s a good secretarial college in Southampton,” she said.

  “But is it a good stable?” asked Angus.

  “It’s approved and has a covered school.”

  I looked at Rachel, who was staring out of the window as if all the answers were there among the flowers and trees. I wondered whether she would ever be able to adjust to another life.

  Angus made coffee which we drank in the garden. Then we piled into the car and went to Hill Farm House. Marli and Maggie were standing in a corner trying to defend themselves from the flies which were everywhere. There was hardly a blade of grass left in the paddock. There were still police in the house, but they let us go up to Rachel’s room to put some of her belongings into a suitcase. She was very quiet now and her room was impersonal like a hotel room, rather than one in a private house.

  “You can stay with us whenever you like,” said Angus, leading the way down the stairs. “I mean it, Rachel – anytime at all …”

  “After what has happened? You must be mad, Angus,” she replied.

  “We’ll want to hear about Marli,” I told her. “Please write.”

  “You can always telephone,” she told us. “But as soon as I can, I shall go abroad. I want to forget this place. My cat died here and Uncle George went out in the woods and died, and my mother and father quarrelled, threatening to tell the authorities what each had done to me and my cat, and Uncle George. Living here has been a nightmare. I never want to come back, never. I hate the place.”

  The police made way for us. We could hear Mum and Rachel’s granny admiring the swimming pool.

  Angus shouted, “Ready! We’ve finished.”

  “Marli must be moved soon,” I said. “There’s no grass left.”

  “You can find her a home. Send me the money, keep ten per cent for yourself, Jean, you’ve earned it,” Rachel said.

  “Don’t you want to ride her any more?” asked Angus.

  “No, I want all this to be over. I don’t want to remember it,” she said.

  We climbed back into the car in silence. Suddenly everything seemed to have been said. A chapter ended.

  “My bike’s still at the Devil’s Churchyard and my hat is in the woods. I’ve lost my bridle, too,” I said as we drove home.

  “We’ll fetch them tomorrow,” promised Mum.

  “If they’re still there,” added Angus.

  Rachel seemed like a stranger now. Someone who had appeared like a friend and almost destroyed us and was going, but Angus would always see her as noble. He would keep saying to me, “She saved your life Jean,” though it was not true, because Phantom had saved my life – and Alison, too, when she had taught me how to vault when I was twelve.

  How little I knew then that being able to vault on to a horse’s back might one day save me from kidnap.

  Rachel stayed in her granny’s car. I think Angus wanted to kiss her, but she did not give him the chance. Then, just as she left, she opened a window and called out, “Thank you for everything,” and we could see that she was crying.

  “Do you think her parents really killed George and the cat?” I asked.

  “Of course,” replied Angus, as though such things happen every day. But who knows – George probably died of a heart attack.

  My story is almost told now. Dad returned later, exhausted. “I’m being given a fortnight’s leave, so we can go somewhere nice,” he said. “And don’t scream, Jean, because you know you can’t ride anyway.”

  “What about Phantom?” I asked.

  “Dominic will have him.”

  “And the police?” asked Angus.

  “Everything’s been said.”

  “Not quite. There are a few ends still to be tied up,” argued Angus. “What happened to the camera and my cassette-recorder when David Winter raided the place? And who put those awful words above Jean’s bed?”

  “They were meant to confuse you. To make the police think it was youths robbing the place,” Dad answered, sitting down.

  “And how did they steal Phantom?” I asked.

  “They led him to the end of the lane, then flogged him until they got him into the horse box – you must have seen it by the ruined buildings, Jean. I guess they kept him in it most of the time,
” Dad said.

  “You seem to know everything,” I told him.“And he had weals all over him so you must be right.”

  “No, not completely right. I don’t think I ever will be. I’m only glad it’s over,” he said. “I never liked them. I knew they were phoney from the start.”

  “They don’t want Marli,” I told him.

  “They never did. Rachel won’t change now; it’s too late,” he answered wearily. “What a mess. As for her parents, they will be put away for years.”

  He made himself some tea, then continued, “But if they had got the plan, a lot of heads would have rolled, not just mine, Jean. They would also have made a fortune, because this new system is unique, the greatest invention since radar. It’s so important that it might just alter the whole balance of power. But it has still to be manufactured and that takes time. We need help financially.”

  Then we heard hoofs in the lane. I rushed out and there was Alison leading Phantom from the saddle of a big bay gelding.

  “He was homesick. We’ve walked here slowly. He’s still weak and he won’t get well with us. I’m sorry,” she said.

  I cried, “Thank you!” and threw my arms round Phantom’s neck, while Mum fetched a cold drink for Alison. He smelled of antiseptic and his mane had been brushed and he was wearing a leather head collar with brass buckles.

  “But he’s going to be all right, isn’t he?” I asked, looking at his thin sides, and his greyhound-thin stomach and the weals which were still there on his shrunken quarters. I was trying not to cry.

  “Yes, of course. He’s just exhausted and homesick. You can build him up gradually, give him small feeds two or three times a day,” she advised.

  “With flaked maize, boiled linseed and boiled barley?” I inquired.

  “That’s the idea.”

  “Thank you for bringing him, anyway, and thank you for rescuing me.”

  “No problem. Old Century needs the exercise, but I must go soon or I’ll be caught in the dark. And honestly, Jean, it was Alan who saved you, not us.”

  “No, not altogether. You saved me, too, because you taught me to vault when I was twelve. Do you remember?”