The Queen's Corgi

‘I want you to make sure that no harm comes to him.’

Jenkins had turned remarkably pale.

‘Can I rely on you?’

‘Yes.’

She studied him with an inscrutable expression for quite a while before saying, ‘Andrew tells me you’re rather good on the bagpipes. If you behave yourself, we might arrange to have your band to the Braemar Gathering.’

Jenkins glanced at Simpson somewhat nervously. ‘That would be . . . very nice.’

‘No doubt Andrew will report back to me next time I see him.’ Her Majesty turned and nodded once to the headmistress. ‘Miss Thwaites.’

‘Your Majesty.’ The headmistress was clearly startled to be addressed directly by the Queen, taking several seconds to recover her composure before performing a somewhat stilted curtsey.

‘Oh, and Jenkins, I think you’ll find that I’m the Queen of the United Kingdom, not the Queen of England. And I do actually give a . . . whatever it was you mentioned.’

Pressing a button, the tinted window rolled back up and she disappeared from their view. ‘Drive on, Bradshaw.’

Huchens waited for Bradshaw to clear the palace, accompanied by the usual police escort, before he turned to the Queen. ‘That was very nicely done, ma’am, if I may say so.’

‘You may.’

‘I don’t think the boy will have any more trouble.’

‘Let’s hope not,’ said Her Majesty. ‘You know, Huchens, I came here today to sign into effect measures that will bring economic relief to millions of people. But what just happened was curiously rewarding.’

‘For everyone involved.’

‘Small acts with great love.’

‘Quite right too,’ he agreed, with a very Scottish roll of the ‘r’.

That evening, having travelled to Windsor, the Queen was joined by Charles for a private dinner. Having not seen each other in person for several weeks and with Charles being no fan of lengthy telephone conversations, there was much to catch up on.

‘Did you enjoy Sandringham?’ he asked, knowing how much his mother usually enjoyed her time there.

‘Very much. I spent quite some time at the stables. It’s wonderful to see the new bloodlines coming through.’

The two of them were sitting in the dining room of her apartment, with a butler in attendance and we three corgis lying at their feet. Charles had been known, in the past, to slip the occasional unwanted morsel of food under the table and Winston had positioned himself for exactly such an eventuality. ‘Were the horses pleased to see you?’ asked Charles, a hint of mischief in his tone.

‘So Cameron told me.’ This was evidently something of a running joke.

‘Frisky?’ confirmed Charles.

‘That’s the effect he claims I have on them, just by being at Sandringham.’ Her Majesty sounded doubtful. ‘You know, I’ve been reading a book that makes me wonder if there might be something in what Cameron’s always said. It seems that animals are much more aware of things than we generally give them credit for.’

I cocked my head at him. Winston tilted his own grizzled features in a knowing fashion. Margaret showed little interest in the conversation. ‘There’s some pretty convincing evidence about things like dogs knowing when their owners are coming home.’

‘Really?’ said the Queen.

‘There was a study involving video recorders in people’s houses. They would show the family pooch getting up and going to the front doormat within minutes of its owner leaving work to come home. The owners varied their routine and changed their leaving times and so on. The uncanny thing is how consistent it was, not just for one or two dogs, but for a whole lot of different pets. They seemed to have this way of knowing. It doesn’t seem too far a stretch to suggest that maybe the horses can sense certain things too.’

Looking Winston in the eye, I remembered back to the morning that Michael had visited. How the Queen’s oldest and wisest corgi had suddenly looked up from where we’d been resting in the office of the ladies-in-waiting and made his way downstairs. There had been no need for bells or whistles. Winston had simply known. And sure enough, as soon as we found our way downstairs, we had found Michael.

‘When you ride a horse over time,’ observed Her Majesty, who is an experienced rider, ‘you can develop a very definite sense of connection. Especially when you and the horse do a lot of things together—jumping and so on. It goes beyond the mechanical, the physical.’

‘The jockeys often say they communicate by visualising a particular result.’