A Three Dog Problem

‘If you wouldn’t mind, ma’am . . .’

‘What?’ The Queen was jolted out of her thoughts and realised she had changed position. Lavinia had stopped drawing. ‘I’m so sorry. Is that better?’

‘Thanks. Just another minute or so and . . . there. That one’s done. Phew! Would you like a glass of water?’

‘A sip of tea would help.’

A porcelain cup and saucer appeared at the Queen’s elbow, proffered by Sandy Robertson, her page. After a welcome hit of Darjeeling, she stretched discreetly and rubbed her stiff knee, while the artist reviewed her sketches.

Nearby, two video cameras on tripods and a boom microphone on a stand recorded the session. A small team of three, dressed in practical T-shirts and trousers, moved softly between these and their assigned chairs against the far wall. A lanky young man in the red and navy-blue Royal Household uniform stood by to help or corral them, as appropriate. A documentary was in progress: The Queen’s Art, or something like that – they hadn’t finalised the title. Not just what one owned, but also what one contributed to.

Today they were filming the making of the latest artwork she had agreed to sit for: a bronze bust. There really should be someone recording the filming, the Queen mused, just to round the whole thing off. Or someone to write about the recording of the filming of the sketching . . . ad infinitum. She was used to being watched and used, by now; to being such a source of fascination that her watchers were watched too.

‘Is it going to be life-size, the bust?’ she asked Lavinia.

She knew the answer to this question, but also knew the need to make small talk for the cameras, and the need for that small talk not to be about Lavinia’s recent, horrendous divorce, or her son’s arrest for drug dealing at boarding school. The poor woman was entitled to some privacy.

‘Yes,’ Lavinia said, peering at a group of sketches spread out on a table near her easel. ‘Actually, slightly larger. They want you to stand out at the Royal Society.’

‘Mmm. Was the last one larger too?’

‘I think it was, ma’am, from memory. Did you like it?’

‘Oh, yes. I thought it was rather good. You managed to avoid making me look . . .’ She puffed out her cheeks and made Lavinia laugh. ‘Too much like my great-great-grandmother.’ Heavy. Jowly. Old.

Lavinia went back to her easel. ‘My aim is to make you shimmer. Even in bronze. Right, are you ready, ma’am? If you can turn your head to look at my hand, here. Just a bit more. That’s lovely . . .’

The artist kept up a gentle patter of conversation while she worked. She got more from her subjects when they talked than when they stayed silent. The Queen’s face, in particular, lit up when she was animated. At rest, it could look grimly forbidding, which gave quite the wrong impression of her.

‘Have you been to any good exhibitions recently?’ Lavinia asked, and then regretted it. She should have asked about racing.

But the Queen didn’t seem to mind.

‘We’re opening one next year that I’m looking forward to,’ she said. ‘“Canaletto in Venice”. We have rather a lot of Canaletto.’ By which she meant the largest collection in the world. ‘Bought in bulk by George III from Joseph Smith. He was the consul to Venice at the time. A dull name for a rather interesting man, I’ve always thought.’

Lavinia gulped. ‘Goodness.’

The Queen smiled to herself. She’d had a lively chat on the subject with her Surveyor of Pictures recently. After several decades of living with them, she knew her Canalettos very well, although she preferred her own impressions of the place. Sailing from Ancona to Venice on board Britannia in 1960 – or was it ’61? – visiting the ancient little island of Torcello with Philip, and taking a moonlit gondola ride . . .

She thought back to those early tours on the royal yacht. Italy, Canada, the Pacific Islands . . . Britannia had been fitted out after the war, in another time of austerity, and its interior was practical, rather than extravagant. It suited the Queen’s temperament better than the gilt and grandeur that surrounded her now. How happy they had been, she and Philip and the ‘yotties’, visiting the furthest corners of the globe together. So many marvellous memories. The ‘ghastly little painting’ uniquely conjured some of them in particular.

‘I saw one of my personal paintings at an exhibition by the Royal Navy recently,’ she said aloud. It still rankled.

‘Oh, that’s nice,’ the artist said absently.

‘It wasn’t really. I hadn’t lent it to them. The last time I saw it, it was hanging opposite my bedroom door.’

Lavinia’s head jerked up in shock. ‘Oh dear.’

‘Oh dear precisely,’ the Queen agreed.

‘How did it get there?’

‘That’s a very interesting question.’ A minute later she added, ‘There. I think we’re done.’