by David Michie
‘And we are creating our own broadcast?’ asked the quantum scientist.
‘In a manner of speaking,’ agreed Professor Monday.
‘You see, this goes to the heart of quantum theory too.’
‘It does?’ Her Majesty was following the exchange with interest.
‘Ah!’ exclaimed the professor. ‘Dr. Johar is getting at the non-duality of the observer and the observed.’
His fellow scientist nodded, brushing her hair back from her face. ‘Quantum theory tells us that it is meaningless to divide the observing apparatus from the observed.’
The Queen absorbed this with a pensive expression.
I noticed Dr. Johar flash an apprehensive glance at Professor Monday, as though she may have waded too far into quantum soup. Then Her Majesty said, ‘Someone was explaining to me only recently how things are much less solid than we believe. How perception is misleading.’
Dr. Johar smiled with some relief. ‘A quantum scientist, perhaps?’
The Queen regarded her kindly. ‘Actually, someone from a spiritual background.’
‘There is a convergence going on,’ said the Professor.
‘Is there?’
‘Oh, yes!’ chimed Dr. Johar. ‘The esoteric traditions of both the east and the west tell us that we create our own reality, even if we don’t recognise this. In my own field, Erwin Schrodinger once said: Every man’s world picture is, and always remains, a construct of his mind and cannot be proved to have any other existence. There is . . .’ she slid the fingers of both hands together, ‘a harmony between science and spirituality at their highest levels.’
The Queen nodded. ‘If only these essential truths were better understood by all.’
‘Quite so, ma’am,’ responded the Professor in agreement.
Her Majesty’s canine representatives made their way home from this meeting separately. Because I was at the Queen’s ankles when she was ushered out of the room to prepare for her next engagement, I went with her. Winston and Margaret would return to our quarters in the company of Lady Tara. Which was why, of all the royal corgis, I alone had the privilege of being with Her Majesty when we both had one of the most extraordinary encounters of our lives.
Dusk was falling as we made our way through the winding corridors of Windsor. There was also an unusual coolness in the air, even though the central heating was usually reliable. Security kept a discreet distance, out of sight both in front and behind, so that it felt as though the two of us were alone, as we returned to Her Majesty’s private suite.
It so happened that our route passed the entrance to the royal library, a sumptuous room with red leather sofas, reading lights and wooden bookshelves that reached all the way to a toweringly high and ornate ceiling. Every one of the shelves was packed with leather-bound volumes, some of which seemed to be of very great antiquity.
The door was ajar and, the room being unused, no lamps had been switched on. But as the two of us passed by, we heard the unmistakeable sound of clicking heels on its wooden flooring. The Queen paused. I did too. Was a family member visiting to find something to read? But if so, who?
The footsteps were decidedly female. Her Majesty decided to investigate. Pushing the door wider, she stepped inside. I followed, snout to ankle, as curious as she . . . if not more so.
We found ourselves looking at a woman standing at the window, wearing a black dress and shawl and who I sensed was a family member. But she was not one I had yet encountered and nor, to judge by the Queen’s expression, had she.
The woman was only a short distance away from us, in silhouette. She was staring outside as though absorbed in a very different time and place. Without the need for words or even gestures, she conveyed the unmistakeable presence of greatness. ‘How do you do?’ the Queen greeted her, as she did people of all rank. At the window, the visitor nodded in acknowledgement, just once and very slowly, as though in a trance.
After a while, when it was evident the lady in black wasn’t going to say anything further, the Queen asked her directly a question to which we both wanted to know the answer: ‘Who are you?’
She turned and looked at us directly. Her features were pale, eyes perceptive, auburn hair unadorned. And yet, in the instant that she faced us, we were suddenly presented with an altogether different image of bejewelled magnificence, crown and ermine, sceptre and sword, of a high, white collar and ancient splendour.
‘Elizabeth,’ she spoke with absolute clarity.
‘And . . . why are you here?’ Her Majesty was not only able to maintain her composure, but asked the question with a tone of kind enquiry, even sympathy for a being who was somehow lost.
Elizabeth turned back to the window. ‘Because . . .’ she seemed to be reflecting carefully on her answer, ‘I am married to England.’
Both Her Majesty and I were following her every movement closely, when there was a sound in the passage outside. A gentle knock at the door. ‘Everything alright, ma’am?’ came an enquiry from security and, in an instant, Elizabeth had vanished.
‘Quite,’ replied the Queen looking down at me. I knew she was wondering if I had seen Elizabeth too. I pressed my nose against her ankle wishing to convey that I had been with her through it all. I had witnessed not just one Queen Elizabeth, but two, in the same room and in conversation with each other, even though they lived centuries apart. How many corgis ever got to see that?
I couldn’t wait to tell Winston, but I had to pick my timing carefully. It was dinner time when I got back, and nothing, not even wondrous tales of the supernatural, could be allowed to distract a dog from his evening meal. It was true that Winston approached his food with less gusto than usual, on account of the flu. But all three of us were focused with single-minded attention on our plates, before we were taken for our post-prandial perambulation by security.
That evening, the three of us kept close together as we walked through the gardens. I knew better than to say anything in front of Margaret. She was not what Winston would call simpatico with any reports of experiences which didn’t conform to her own, narrow expectations. And not believing is not seeing. So it was much later, when we had retired to our baskets in front of the staff quarters’ fire, that the opportunity presented itself.
I waited to hear the sound of contented dozing from Margaret’s basket, before I climbed out of my own and into Winston’s. His own snoring was more laboured than usual—but it came to a halt the moment I got onto the blanket beside him.
The words came tumbling out. ‘On our way back this evening, the Queen and I were in the library and saw this amazing thing. I mean person. I mean, kind of like a person . . . only she wasn’t.’
Winston’s eyes blinked blearily open. ‘Go on.’
‘She was Queen Elizabeth. Only the first one. Wearing a black dress. She was there one moment and gone the next.’
‘Indeed?’ Although surprised, Winston wasn’t reacting with quite the degree of excitement I had hoped.
‘Did she speak?’
‘Only to say . . .’
‘Don’t tell me,’ he interjected. ‘That she was married to England?’
It was my turn for astonishment. ‘You’ve seen her too?’
‘Never! What you witnessed today was rare indeed. But not without precedent. The Queen’s father also once saw her ghost. She was dressed in black and said she was married to England.’
‘So she was a ghost?’
I knew nothing about ghosts, but thought they were supposed to be scary. Although the first Queen Elizabeth had possessed a decidedly otherworldly quality, I hadn’t found her scary. If anything, I had been struck by a poignant sadness.
‘Ghost. Spirit. What do these words actually mean? There is plenty of . . . activity at Windsor Castle. As the longest occupied royal castle in Europe, with so many kings and queens of the past thousand years living, dying and buried here, it’s hardly surprising. I think of what you witnessed today along the lines of trapped energy.’
I cocked my head to one side.
‘Like trapped wind; never comfortable for those involved and always a relief when it passes.’
‘Better out than in?’ I confirmed.
‘Winston’s First Dictum,’ he agreed.
I returned to my own basket, lest this unexpected turn in conversation started having a suggestive effect. I was beginning to doze off some minutes later, when Winston murmured from his basket, ‘Very auspicious that you saw the great Tudor Queen today.’
‘Hmm,’ I agreed, sleepily.
‘A sign, dear boy, that you are ready to take over.’
‘Take over what?’ I asked drowsily and without much comprehension.
But Winston said nothing more, his cryptic words left to wash beneath the rolling waves of drowsiness as I fell asleep.
One morning soon afterwards, on our return from a stay at Buckingham Palace, we emerged into the staff garden at Windsor to find everything had changed. The walls had been freshly painted. A new outdoor furniture setting took pride of place. And the flowerbeds were planted with shrubs and a dazzling array of bright, spring flowers—daffodils and crocuses formed a blaze of colour.
Winston stood pensively, observing this announcement of a new season. I romped around the circuit of flowers, taking in the scents and shapes and colours. Margaret proceeded directly to the place in the flowerbeds where she used to bury her bones. The earth was freshly dug and loose, in itself not a promising development. Making fast progress, she scooped below the surface, first in one place then another, before turning with a mournful expression and nose covered in potting mix. ‘Gone! All of them. They’ve taken the lot!’
I set off immediately for the outdoor shed housing the garbage bins. The whole area had been cleaned up including, I soon discovered, my own small collection of bones, nowhere to be seen. Returning to the others I followed where both Margaret and Winston were looking towards the flowerpots, where Winston so casually cast off his own chewed remains. They were still there, only neatly stacked in a pile.
‘You like the new garden, corgis?’ asked security, stepping outside and nursing a mug of coffee in his hand. Then he noticed where we were looking. ‘Don’t worry; we didn’t throw out all your bones. We wouldn’t do that to Her Majesty’s canine representatives. We only got rid of the ones that were cluttering up the garden beds and so forth.’
Margaret and I both turned to look at Winston, who tossed his head with a snort.
‘Hidden in plain sight,’ said he.
CHAPTER 8
There had been signs—not that we had noticed them. Coughing spells that lasted longer than they should have. Too many meals not fully eaten. There were also walks when he remained at home, saying he just wasn’t feeling up to it today. We had thought he was simply having a hard time shaking off the remains of the flu bug that he had picked up over winter. With the benefit of hindsight, we should have worked it out sooner. The simple fact, my fellow subject, was that Winston was gravely ill.
He did try to warn us. But as usual, there was an elusive quality to what he said, so that I didn’t hear what he was trying to tell us. In my own case, that was probably because I didn’t want to listen.
I remember padding over the lawns to the river near Windsor Castle, our progress slower than in the past, when Winston paused near an extravagant spray of crocuses. ‘A spring morning has never seemed as filled with promise as it is today,’ he intoned, his voice tremulous.
I raised my nose and inhaled the sweet fragrance of the meadows. To me, the morning seemed exactly like the day before—and how it would no doubt seem tomorrow and the day after that. ‘It is nice,’ I agreed. But I did wonder why he was making such a big deal of it.
Dozing by the fire a few evenings later, he rolled over towards me from where he had been stretched out to absorb the full warmth of the fire on his tummy. ‘Delightfully toasty!’ he enthused, stretching out his legs.
‘Hmm,’ I agreed, sleepily.
‘Nothing nicer than roasting oneself before the hearth!’ he continued, as if the experience had led to some kind of epiphany.
I blinked open an eye—the one that wasn’t concealed beneath my floppy ear. ‘You seem very . . .’ I searched for the word.
‘Very what?’
‘Very . . . happy with little things. Like a spring morning. Being by the fire.’
‘Appreciation.’
‘Hmm.’
‘And that’s because the little things are the big things, when you don’t know how many of them you have left.’
‘But doesn’t spring come every year?’ I asked, combining naivety with thoughtless ingratitude. ‘Don’t we have a fire every night?’
‘That may be,’ he replied, without a trace of judgement. ‘But do any of us know for sure that we will be around to run through the fields next spring? Or even to sprawl in front of the fire tomorrow night? Life is impermanent, dear boy. Fleeting. None of us knows just how precious it is, until we realise that it will come to an end. Perhaps sooner than we imagine.’
I understood the point that Winston was making. But so gentle was his hinting that I didn’t understand why. A more mature dog would no doubt have worked it out pretty quickly. But I was neither very mature, nor the most observant of corgis.
I took notice when the subject came up again several days later, from one of my favourites in the extended household. Harry, along with William and Kate, had set up the Royal Foundation, which was a charity working in areas of special interest to them. It so happened that Harry had invited a small group of former servicemen to Buckingham Palace. Margaret and I escorted the party—Winston was feeling poorly—as the young prince showed them around the palace, including a number of rooms that most members of the public never get to see. Each of the servicemen had, at some time in the past, been seriously wounded and their lives had changed shape as a result of their wounds. Today’s visit was both a celebration of their survival and the way that several of them had discovered new energy and fresh purpose.
There was Jeff, the former SAS captain now wheelchair-bound, who had taken up basketball as part of his rehabilitation program. He had fast developed such ability for the sport that he had excelled himself at the Invictus Games, before going on to set up innovative training programs for paraplegic athletes throughout the country. In recent months, he had been invited to help train teams in the USA and Europe.
Leighton was a very different character. The quiet, older man had been so shattered after imprisonment and torture in Afghanistan that he had been unable to speak for several months after coming home. Finding his way to a farm in Cornwall, where he didn’t have to interact with anyone except for his immediate family, he had taken up beekeeping as a hobby, after discovering a few unused beehives in the garden shed. He had found unexpected solace spending time in silent communion with his hives of bees. The hobby had evolved as he discovered he had a particular way with the insects, and he was able to harvest honey made from specific plants. In time, his handmade, single-origin, organic honey had come to the attention of one of Britain’s most famous chefs. At this point he and also his bees were suddenly in demand.
It was intriguing listening to former veterans tell their stories. As so often in the past, I felt that Buckingham Palace was the energetic heart of the nation, sending out waves of inspiration and gathering them back again through stories such as these. That quiet but ever-present rhythm of benevolent purpose, embodied by the Queen herself, coursed through unseen channels and out into the broader world. In the telling of stories such as these, the people involved and the inspiration they shared seemed to return home.
But it was while they were sharing coffee in the garden afterwards that I overheard a conversation between Harry and one of his guests and it had a real impact on me.
‘Coming to these sorts of events always makes me feel like a fraud,’ the former serviceman was saying, as I padded up to them. ‘Physically and mentally, I have completely recovered. There is absolutely n
othing wrong with me.’
Harry was nodding.
‘I’ve got some qualifications. I could study for others. I’m willing to try new things. The problem,’ he confessed unhappily, ‘is that I just don’t know what to do. I actually feel quite envious of people who have a specific talent. A burning passion to build a business or to become a trainer.’ He shrugged. ‘Or make honey.’
‘I get it,’ said Harry.
‘I wish I could somehow narrow the range. Work out which of the twenty things I could do would give me a sense of purpose.’
Harry paused to reflect for a while before he asked, ‘Are you familiar with the three questions which can help us work out what really matters to us?’
The former serviceman looked at Harry with interest. ‘No, sir.’
‘They can be quite useful. Not immediately, but after giving them some thought. The first question is: if you knew for sure that you were going to die in exactly ten years’ time, how would you choose to spend your time?’
The serviceman raised his eyebrows, the question evidently was unexpected.
‘The second question is: if you knew for sure that you were going to die in exactly one year, how would you choose to spend your time?’
Harry’s guest nodded.
‘And the third question: if you were to die in twenty-four hours, what would you have missed?’
‘Ah!’ The other smiled. Then after a pause, ‘Challenging.’
‘Exactly,’ confirmed Harry.
‘If you think you have all the time in the world, what you do next doesn’t really matter. I suppose these questions make you face the reality that life is finite.’
I pricked up my one and a half ears. The conversation seemed to mirror what Winston had been saying only a few days ago about the truth of impermanence. Except that Harry’s guest had been more direct: life is finite.