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‘Quite so,’ said he.
Dozing in our baskets, I reflected on all that had happened during that eventful day. The meeting with Lord Cranleigh that morning and what the Queen had told him. The psychologist that evening and how he’d made the same distinction between outer and inner. The more I mulled it over, the more it occurred to me how both of them seemed to be saying the same thing. The Queen used plain words, but I recognised now that when she’d said we shouldn’t confuse outward appearance with inner qualities because our wellbeing depended on it, she had been hinting at a much deeper truth. One with an importance going well beyond the floppy ear of a single corgi, but one that most certainly included me too. It was thanks to the Queen’s understanding of the true cause of happiness that prompted her to dispatch Tara to my rescue, when she’d heard what I was about to face at the hands of Mr Grimsley. Tara’s neighbour’s daughter, having just been to The Crown, had told Tara over the fence what she’d just heard Mr Grimsley saying. Tara, in turn, had told Her Majesty. Acting on her concern for others—in this case me—the Queen had been engaged in the pursuit of eudemonia.
Glancing up from the book she was reading, her eyes met mine—and she smiled. Curled next to Winston, I wagged my stump. It didn’t matter to the Queen that my ear was floppy and so, for the first time that I could ever remember, nor did it matter to me. Inner qualities, not outer appearances. If this was what wellbeing felt like, I looked forward to enjoying more of it.
In the weeks that followed, I adjusted to my new life as a royal corgi. And to my new homes. Palaces and castles with large rooms containing not a single corgi quickly began to seem the norm. I became familiar not only with the royal family, but with the household staff who attended them. It wasn’t long before I had been the Queen’s corgi for longer that I had been the Grimsleys’, so my unfortunate start in life began to recede to nothing more than an unhappy memory. Which, I thought, was where the Grimsleys would remain.
But, my fellow subject, I was mistaken.
One morning we three corgis were in the lady-in-waiting’s Buckingham Palace office, in a favourite sunspot on a sumptuous rug between the desks of Tara and Sophia. Tara was going through the day’s mail, when she snorted in a most unladylike way. ‘Seriously!’ she exclaimed, pushing back her chair, unable to resist stepping over to share a particular letter with Sophia. All three of us looked up as Sophia quickly scanned the letter.
‘Outrageous!’ she agreed, her gypsy eyes flashing.
Both ladies looked directly at me.
The letter was from Mrs Patricia Gwendolyn Grimsley. She had been watching TV news and the coverage of a charity function, when she noticed that one of ‘her’ corgis had joined the royal household. She and her husband, loyal Kennel Club members, were pleased to see their dearest, all-time favourite puppy had been acquired by Her Majesty. How, they wished to know, could they apply for a Royal Warrant, now that they were established purveyors of corgis to the Queen’s household?
‘Never wanted to hear from me again!’ Tara was indignant. ‘The nerve of the woman!’
‘Oh, you’ll have to reply,’ Sophia’s eyes sparkled mischievously. ‘Sign your letter “Lying Toerag, Her Majesty’s lady-in-waiting”.’
The two women burst out laughing.
‘Didn’t she make you promise never to say where you got him?’ asked Sophia.
‘She did. Solemnly.’ Tara returned to her desk. ‘Which makes my decision easy.’
Leaning forward under her desk, she fed the letter into a shredder which whirred noisily.
‘The only royal treatment she deserves is a one-way trip to the Tower of London.’
‘The Queen can send people to the Tower?’ I turned to the other corgis, instantly sensing a reputation as sinister as the shed.
‘She can.’ Margaret’s eyes glowed with fervour.
‘But doesn’t,’ confirmed Winston.
Well, I thought, that’s what makes Her Majesty different from Mrs Grimsley.
It was not long after this that a very different item of correspondence arrived, one which Tara had no hesitation showing the Queen. It consisted of a single, but extraordinary photograph of an elephant silhouetted at sunset. It had been sent from Africa by Anthony Cranleigh, son of the lord. Along with the photograph was a short, handwritten note, which Tara read aloud as Her Majesty admired the photograph.
Your Majesty, I am quite sure this will never reach you, but I just wanted to write it anyway to express my heartfelt thanks. All through my teenage years, I wanted to be a wildlife photographer, but my father kept insisting this wasn’t a ‘proper’ job. He was determined that I should follow him into investment banking. Something you said to him recently made him change his mind. I don’t know what it was, but it has allowed me to follow my dream, for which I am truly grateful. I would like you to have this photograph from my first visit to Kenya.
‘Very nice,’ said the Queen, gazing at the photograph.
Winston and I exchanged a glance.
‘So, that was what that whole thing was about? My floppy ear? Being guided by the right priorities?’
‘Look sharp,’ said he.
CHAPTER 2
I wish I could tell you that, after my move from Slough to Windsor, I lived happily ever after. If only I could report that my life was an endless succession of intriguing encounters by day and cosy fireside dozes with the royal family by night; that the inspiring presence of Her Majesty, the growing companionship of Winston and Margaret and regular bouts of canapé eating in gilded chambers all combined to afford me a life of unalloyed bliss. Alas, I cannot.
It was a huge relief to have been rescued from the Grimsleys and the Queen and all those around her could not have been nicer. However, when I think back to those early days as a royal corgi, a shadow falls over me. More than anything, I am filled with shame.
There really isn’t a nice way to say this, so I will just have to come out with it. I will risk the fact that, within the space of the next paragraph—or perhaps one or two after that—you are going to snap this book shut with a gasp of disappointment. Perhaps a furrow will wrinkle your brow as you wonder why you have wasted so much as a minute reading the work of a canine as deficient as I am. But the facts must be faced. Steel yourself, my fellow subject, for the following painful truth is one that must be addressed: when I first joined the royal family, I was not palace trained.
