Dick King-Smith's Book of Pets

by Dick King-Smith

  Chapter One

  In an armchair in the great high-ceilinged drawing room sat a woman surrounded by dogs. Some sat in other chairs, some on the hearthrug, one, the youngest and not much more than a pup, on the woman’s lap.

  All the dogs were of the same breed. All of them looked up as the door of the room was opened by a tallish man with a strong nose and receding hair and rather bristly eyebrows, who strode in with a military gait that suggested he might once have been a soldier, or perhaps a sailor.

  At sight of him, the youngest dog jumped off the woman’s lap and rushed forward, getting between the man’s legs and almost tripping him up.

  The bristly eyebrows came together in a frown. ‘Good heavens, Madge!’ said the man angrily. ‘Do we have to have these fat little brutes under our feet all the time?’

  The woman rose to her full height (which was not very great). Unlike her husband, she was plump and had thick grey hair set in neat permanent waves.

  Like him, she looked angry. ‘There would be no problem if you looked where you were going,’ she said in a high voice, ‘and I’ll thank you not to refer to my dogs as fat little brutes. They are not fat. They simply have short legs, like all corgis.’

  Husband and wife stood glowering at one another in that grumpy way that long-married people sometimes do, but before anything else could be said, there was a knock on the door and into the drawing room came a footman carrying a tray. This he placed upon a table before withdrawing, backwards.

  Once the door was closed, the tallish man said, ‘You feed ’em too much, Madge, that’s the trouble.’

  ‘That is your opinion, Philip,’ said the Queen icily, ‘which I should be glad if you would keep to yourself. Do you want a cup of coffee?’

  ‘No, thanks, I fancy something stronger,’ the man said, and he withdrew, frontwards. The Queen poured herself a cup of coffee, and then, taking from the tray a plate of biscuits, proceeded to feed them to the corgis. ‘Custard creams, my dears,’ she said, smiling. ‘Your favourites.’ And she gave an extra one to the youngest corgi. ‘Not your fault,’ she said to him. ‘He wasn’t looking where he was going.’

  Later, when the Queen had finished her coffee and left the room, the mother of the youngest corgi jumped into her chair, warm from the imprint of the Royal bottom, and her son scrambled up beside her.

  His name was Titus, and like all young creatures, he was curious about everything. It was the first time he had been allowed into the drawing room of the Castle, and also the first time he had met the Queen’s husband.

  ‘Mum,’ he said. ‘Who was that man?’

  ‘The Queen’s husband,’ his mother replied.

  ‘“Philip”, she called him,’ said Titus.

  ‘Yes. He’s Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Titus. ‘They didn’t seem to like each other much.’

  ‘I think they do,’ said his mother. ‘Their barks are worse than their bites.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Titus. ‘Mum, you told me she’s called Queen Elizabeth the Second.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What happened to the First?’

  ‘Died. A long time ago.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Titus. ‘But, Mum, if her name’s Elizabeth, why does Prince Philip call her Madge?’

  ‘It’s his nickname for her,’ his mother said. ‘Short for Majesty.’

  Chapter Two

  The door of the great drawing room now opened once again, and in came the footman to collect the tray on which stood the two cups and saucers, the coffee pot, and the plate that had held the biscuits.

  The footman inspected the tray. One cup had been used, he saw, one not, and, picking up the coffee pot, he found that it was still half full. He grinned.

  ‘Ta very much, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Plenty left for me. But surely you’ve never scoffed all those custard creams? I could have done with a couple.’

  Then he looked around the room and saw ten pairs of bright eyes watching him from various chairs or from the rug before the blazing fire. Ten pink tongues licked ten pairs of lips and ten stumps of tails wagged hopefully.

  ‘Of course!’ said the footman. ‘I should have known. It wasn’t her that ate ’em, it was you greedy little fatties. Treats you better than she treats old Phil, or Charlie, or the rest of ’em, she does. Pity you don’t live out in the Far East. They eat dogs out there. You lot would make a proper banquet.’ And he picked up the tray.

  When he had left the room, ‘Mum,’ said Titus. ‘Who was that man?’

  ‘Just a footman,’ his mother replied.

  ‘Footman?’ said Titus. ‘What was wrong with his feet?’

  ‘Nothing, dear,’ said his mother.

  ‘A footman is one of the servants in the Castle – there are lots of them.’

  ‘What’s a servant?’

  ‘Someone who looks after you, does whatever he or she is told, fetches and carries, just like that footman brought the tray for the Queen and the Duke.’

  ‘But, Mum,’ said Titus. ‘Why couldn’t they fetch their own coffee and biscuits?’

  ‘Oh goodness me, no, Titus!’ said his mother. ‘That would never do. The Queen and Prince Philip have to be looked after. They’re not expected to work. When you get a little older, you’ll realize that Queen Elizabeth is the most important person in the land. No one is more important than she is, at least no other human being.’

  Titus cocked his ears. ‘If I’m reading you right, Mum,’ he said, ‘you’re saying that there’s an animal that’s more important than the Queen?’

  ‘Several animals,’ said his mother.

  ‘What sort?’

  ‘Pembrokeshire corgis.’

  ‘Us, d’you mean?’

  ‘Yes, Titus,’ replied his mother. ‘The Queen, you see, may be responsible for the welfare not just of her family but of all the citizens of the United Kingdom and her realms overseas. But, in her eyes, it is our welfare that is at the top of her priorities and most important to her. She is our servant.’

  ‘Gosh!’ said Titus. ‘D’you mean she’ll do whatever we tell her to?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said his mother.

  ‘If I told her to do something, she’d do it, would she, Mum?’

  ‘If you told her in the right way.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘Politely. Her Majesty does not like being barked at or yapped at. You’ll have noticed that just now, when she dished out the biscuits, we all kept as quiet as mice. Any time you want a biscuit, just go and sit quite silently in front of the Queen and gaze up into her eyes with a pleading look.

  ‘And don’t ever be tempted to lift a paw and scratch at the Royal legs. A couple of years ago one of your cousins laddered Her Majesty’s stockings. Never seen him since.’

  ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘He was sent to the Tower of London.’

  ‘To be killed?’

  ‘No, no, he was given to one of the warders. But the family felt the disgrace keenly.’

  ‘The Royal Family?’ asked Titus.

  ‘No, no, our family,’ said his mother. ‘And one other thing, Titus, while I think of it. If ever you’re taken short …’

  ‘Taken short?’

  ‘Yes, you know, if you need to, um, cock your leg, or, er, do your business, there is a proper way of going about it if the Queen is in the room. If it’s anyone else, it doesn’t matter, you can yap your head off or scratch at the door. But if it’s the Queen, this is the correct form. You walk to the door – no running, mind, just walk – and sit in front of it and give a little whine – no barking, mind – and you look back at Her Majesty, and then she’ll hurry to let you out.’

  ‘One thing she does not like and that’s any sort of accident, on the carpets, say, or against the leg of a chair. Our servant she may be, but it’s important to treat servants right if you want them to look after you well.’

  Perhaps because his mother had just been talking about it, Titus suddenly
felt that he did indeed need to do something very badly. How awful, he thought, if on this, his first time in the great drawing room at Windsor Castle, he should offend their servant the Queen by doing it, not on a chair leg, for he had not yet learned to cock his own leg, but on the carpet. Her Majesty would never forgive him!

  ‘Mum!’ he cried. ‘I need a wee!’

  Titus’s mother, whose registered name was Lady Priscilla of Windsor but who was always called Prissy by Her Majesty, immediately began to bark loudly.

  ‘Mayday! Mayday!’ she cried to the other corgis in the room.

  ‘What’s up, Prissy?’ they all asked.

  ‘It’s not what’s up,’ replied Prissy. ‘It’s what will be down unless we hurry. Titus needs to go outside, sharpish. Sound the alarm!’ And at this all the other eight dogs began to bark at the tops of their voices.

  Quickly the door of the drawing room was opened and in came a footman. Titus could see that it was not the same one that had come in before to fetch the tray, for that one had had fair curly hair, whereas this one had straight black hair and, as well, a strip of black hair between his nose and his mouth.

  By now, Titus was whining in his distress, and the footman, instantly sizing up the situation, picked him up, hurried away down a corridor, opened a side door and popped the puppy down on the beautifully mown green grass of a lawn outside.

  Thankfully Titus squatted down and did an enormous puddle.

  Chapter Three

  ‘What a good boy!’ said a voice from somewhere high above, and man and dog looked up to see the Queen leaning out of an upstairs window.

  The black-moustached footman snapped to attention at sight of Her Majesty, while Titus wagged his rump on seeing the woman who, Mum had told him, was their servant.

  ‘Leave the puppy there, John,’ called the Queen. ‘I’m coming right down,’ and in a few moments she came out of the door on to the lawn, and bent down to stroke Titus and pat him and rub the roots of his ears, something that he found very pleasant.

  ‘Lucky for you that you didn’t do all that on my carpets,’ said the Queen. ‘You would have been a most unpopular pup.’ Then she picked Titus up and held him before her face and looked into his eyes.

  Most animals, dogs included, cannot bear the direct stare of a human being for long and will look away. But Titus stared back into the Royal eyes, flattening his ears with pleasure and wrinkling his lips in a sort of grin. She seems nice, this Queen person, he thought, and at that instant Her Majesty spoke to him once again.

  ‘Titus, my boy,’ said the Queen, ‘I have a funny feeling that you are going to be a very special dog.’

  At that moment there came another voice, a deep voice, from the upstairs window, and Titus looked up to see the Duke of Edinburgh leaning out.

  ‘Telephone, Madge!’ he called.

  ‘Well, answer it, Philip, can’t you?’

  ‘I have done. It’s for you.’

  ‘I’m busy,’ replied the Queen, continuing to stroke Titus. ‘Who is it, anyway?’

  ‘It’s the Prime Minister.’

  ‘Bother!’ said the Queen. ‘One wishes sometimes,’ she said to Titus as she carried him upstairs, ‘that one was not continually pestered by politicians ringing one up in one’s own home. I daresay you’d be surprised to know, for instance, that what is called the Queen’s Speech is not mine at all. The whole thing’s written by my government, which actually isn’t mine anyway. I tell you, Titus, being Queen is a dog’s life.’

  Back in the great drawing room, Prissy was getting worried. ‘Titus has been gone an awful long time,’ she said to the others. ‘I hope he’s not got into any trouble.’

  In reply, the bitches among the corgis said helpful things like ‘Of course not, dear, he’ll be back in a minute, you’ll see,’ and the dogs made unhelpful remarks such as ‘Ah well, boys will be boys,’ and ‘Let’s hope the Prince of Wales doesn’t come visiting with those terriers of his – they won’t half knock the lad about.’

  So it was with great relief that at last Prissy saw the door open and the Queen enter, carrying Titus, and she ran forward whining anxiously. The Queen put the puppy down on the carpet, and his mother licked his ear.

  ‘Where have you been all this time?’ she asked him. ‘Mummy’s been worrying.’

  ‘I’ve been with our servant,’ Titus said.

  ‘Our servant? Oh – oh, you mean Her Majesty?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Prissy,’ the Queen said. ‘I would have brought him back sooner, but I had to answer a phone call, and a very long phone call it was too. Politicians are all the same, they love the sound of their own voices.’ She rang a bell and another footman appeared, this time a red-headed one.

  ‘Biscuits, please, Patrick,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, Your Majesty,’ said the footman. ‘What kind, ma’am?’

  ‘Custard creams. Oh, and two chocolate digestives.’

  The Queen sat down in her armchair, and when the biscuits came she fed the custard creams to Prissy and the other eight adult dogs, but offered nothing to Titus.

  What about me? he thought, and he moved towards the Royal legs. Mustn’t scratch at ’em, he thought to himself, I might ladder the Royal stockings. But I would like to know if there are any biscuits left on that plate, and in an effort to see, he sat bolt upright on his fat little bottom, his front paws held out imploringly before him.

  ‘That,’ said the Queen, ‘is an extremely clever thing to do. Never before have I had a corgi that could manage that trick – they always fall over backwards. Now something that my great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria was fond of saying was “We are not amused.” But I must tell you, Titus, that we are amused.’ And she broke the two chocolate digestives into pieces and carefully fed them to the young corgi who, had either of them known it, was destined to become the most famous dog in the land.

  Chapter Four

  Ever since she was a small girl – then of course known as Princess Elizabeth – the Queen had always been surrounded by corgis. The Royal Family had many other dogs of many other sorts at Buckingham Palace, at Windsor Castle, at Sandringham, at Balmoral in Scotland. But corgis had always been the favourite breed.

  Not that the Queen had a particular favourite among them, for she treated them all equally, though she might have admitted to a rather special liking for Lady Priscilla of Windsor, the senior member of the present pack. Prissy had had many puppies in her life, but the birth of her last litter had been a time of high drama. Perhaps because of her rather advanced age, the whelping was a difficult one, and an operation was needed to try to save the unborn pups. Three did not survive. One, Titus, did.

  From the moment of his birth the Queen took an interest in this, the only surviving child of this last litter of her dear Prissy, which explains why he had been allowed into the great drawing room of the Castle at a much earlier age than puppies usually were.

  Who knows what might have happened had Titus, so young and untrained, puddled on the carpet. But he hadn’t. Instead he had asked to go out, and he had done it on the lawn, and the Queen had seen him do it. Later, what’s more, he had sat bolt upright on his bottom before her, something no corgi of hers had ever done before.

  ‘This last puppy of yours is quite a character,’ said the Queen to Prissy. ‘Not that I believe in favouritism, of course.’ But it was not long before a great many people in the Castle, from the three footmen, fair-haired, black-moustached, red-headed, to such an august person as the Comptroller of Her Majesty’s Household, noticed that, wherever the Queen went, she was now always accompanied by one particular young corgi.

  Sometimes he followed at her heels, sometimes she followed at his, but it was soon plain to everyone that, though the Queen was on record as saying that she didn’t believe in having favourites, she now had one.

  Even her husband noticed. Prince Philip, though fond of dogs in general, did not particularly like corgis. ‘Always tripping me up,’ he would say
. Now, looking carefully at Titus at teatime one day, he asked, ‘I say, Madge, isn’t that the little brute that nearly had me over a while ago?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the Queen, ‘and he’s not a brute and you should look where you’re going.’

  ‘Charles’s blasted little terriers are bad enough,’ said the Duke, ‘but at least they’re nippy enough to get out of the way. Whereas corgis are just designed for tripping people up, bumbling about like they do, fat little beasts. Any more tea in that pot, Madge?’

  When the Queen had poured her husband’s tea, she took a sugar lump from the bowl and held it out before Titus, who sat straight up on his bottom, eyes fixed upon the treat.

  ‘Never seen one of ’em do that before,’ said Prince Philip.

  ‘Clever, aren’t you, Titus?’ said the Queen, and she gave him the sugar lump.

  ‘“Titus”, is he?’ said the Duke. ‘Where are the rest of ’em then, Madge?’

  ‘Oh, they’re somewhere around,’ replied the Queen.

  ‘This one’s a bit special then, is he?’

  ‘You know I don’t have favourites, Philip,’ said the Queen. ‘It’s just that Titus is an only child, and Prissy’s last one at that because I shan’t breed from her again, not at her age.’

  The Duke of Edinburgh drained his cup and stood up. ‘Be nice if you didn’t breed from any of ’em any more, Madge,’ he said. ‘That way they’d all die out and I could walk around without falling over ’em. Just hang on to that Titus till I’m out of the room.’