“Don’t be beastly, Wolf,” Polly said, rather sharply.
The wolf jumped.
“You frightened me,” he said reproachfully. “I didn’t know you were there.”
“I was here first,” Polly reminded him.
“I daresay. I was looking at the books and I stopped noticing you. When I get my nose into a good book,” the wolf went on dreamily, “I get carried away.”
“Don’t show off, Wolf,” Polly said. “I know you can read, but I don’t believe you ever get lost in a book unless it’s a cookery book. When I was in your house there wasn’t a book to be seen.”
“I get them all out of the library,” the wolf said hastily. “And anyhow now I’m not just reading, I’m writing a book.”
“Oh, Wolf!” cried Polly, very much impressed. “How wonderful. What’s it about?”
“Us,” the wolf said. “Well, me really. Mostly me, but a little you. Only you don’t last very long, of course.”
“Why of course?”
“Because I eat you up. Very soon. Because in my book I am Clever and you are Stupid. It’s quite different from that silly book that was written about us before.”
“It must be.”
“This,” said the wolf, puffing out his chest, “is terrific. It’s a Guide to Wolves on how to catch conceited little girls who pretend to be clever.”
“I’d like to read it, please,” Polly said.
“Well—” the wolf said, shifting uneasily from one leg to another. “It’s not as easy as it sounds. Have you ever written a book, Polly?”
“No. I’ve written letters.”
“So have I. Dozens. Hundreds. If I added up all the letters I’d written there’d be plenty of whole words among them, too. But still, have you ever tried to write a book?”
“I wrote the beginning of a story once,” Polly said.
“Pooh!” cried the wolf, “the beginning! That’s the easy part. Anyone can begin a story—you just say, ‘Once upon a time there was a nice juicy little girl,’ and there you are.”
“Is it the ending you can’t do?” Polly asked.
The wolf looked thoughtful. “Not exactly,” he said, “I think it’s the middle. I always seem to get to the end quicker than I meant to, and then the story seems too short. How long would you think a book ought to be, Polly?”
Polly thought hard. “About a hundred pages,” she suggested.
“Oh NO!” the wolf said, horrified. “Not a hundred pages of writing. A short book, Polly.”
“Oh, I see,” Polly said. “Well—twenty pages?”
“That’s an awful lot,” the wolf said sadly.
“It couldn’t be less than ten,” Polly said, “or it wouldn’t count as a book at all. Have you written any of it at all yet, Wolf?”
“Of course I have. Lots of it.”
“I wish I could read it,” Polly said.
“Well, I might have a copy on me. Wait a minute and let me look.”
The wolf opened a dilapidated string bag and searched inside it among a sheaf of dog-eared sheets of paper. At last he extracted a small school exercise book with grey paper covers and handed it modestly to Polly.
On the outside front cover was printed:
STUDENTS’ EXERCISE BOOK
Below this was a space for the name and class of the student. This was filled in: NAME—Wolf. CLASS—Upper.
Polly opened the book and looked inside.
“Once upon a time,” she read, “there was a very clever Wolf. He knew a stupid girl called Polly. One day he ate her all up.”
A line or two farther down the page, the author had tried again.
“Fortunately I was born. My mother and father were wolves, so naturally I was one too. I am clever, though some people call me stupid which I am not, only they are so stupid themselves they can’t see I am the Clever one. One day I caught Polly and ate her up.”
Over the page was a third attempt.
“It was a lovely day,” the wolf had written, “and the Clever Wolf went out for a walk. Suddenly he saw poor stupid little Polly, so he jumped on her and ate . . .”
Here the masterpiece abruptly ended. The rest of the book was empty.
“What do you think of it?” the wolf asked eagerly.
“Well,” Polly said kindly, “I think it’s very good as far as you’ve got. But it’s not very far, is it? I mean there’s got to be a bit more than that to make a proper book, hasn’t there?”
“You mean the stories aren’t long enough?”
“No, I don’t think they are. They seem somehow—well, like you said, they haven’t any middles.”
“I know,” the wolf said in despair, “but what can I do about it? You see my wolf is so clever, he catches Polly at once and eats her up. There’s none of this TALK that goes on in that other book,” the wolf said scornfully. “Why, talk is all they ever do. Quite different from me. So when I’m writing about it they don’t talk, they just do things, and what I do, in my book, is I eat you up.”
“Yes, I see,” Polly agreed. “Only it doesn’t make such a good story.”
“It’s a wonderful story!”
“All right, it’s a wonderful story—for you, at any rate. But it isn’t long enough.”
“It will be if I write some more of them.”
“You can’t.”
“Yes I can, easily. I wrote those three without any difficulty—”
“But you can’t put all those three into your book.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, you Stupid Wolf!” Polly cried, exasperated. “How can you have three stories, one after another, about us, if you’ve eaten me up in the first one? Where am I supposed to come from in the second and the third, if I’m inside you before they ever begin?”
“Oh,” the wolf said. “Funny, I never thought of that. And they were such good stories, too,” he added sadly. “Never mind,” he said suddenly, “I always said all this talk won’t get us anywhere.”
He looked hastily up and down the street. There was no one about. The wolf turned and pounced on Polly.
But it wasn’t on Polly. She had opened the door of the bookshop and slipped inside. Just in time. Through the window, the infuriated wolf saw her speak to the proprietor, who went away to the back of the shop and came back with a heavy-looking volume.
With hardly a glance at the window, Polly propped the book up on a shelf so that the wolf could see its title as she began to read.
How to Deal, the title read, with Dumb Animals.
3. Father Christmas
ONE DAY Polly was in the kitchen, washing currants and sultanas to put in a birthday cake, when the front door bell rang.
“Oh dear,” said Polly’s mother, “my hands are all floury. Be a kind girl, Polly, and go and open the door for me, will you?”
Polly was a kind girl, and she dried her hands and went to the front door. As she left the kitchen, her mother called after her. “But don’t open the door if it’s a wolf!”
This reminded Polly of some of her earlier adventures, and before she opened the door she said cautiously through the letter box, “Who are you?”
“A friend,” said a familiar voice.
“Which one?” Polly asked. “Mary?”
“No, not Mary.”
“Jennifer?”
“No, not Jennifer.”
“Penelope?”
“No. At least I don’t think so. No,” said the wolf decidedly, “not Penelope.”
“Well, I don’t know who you are then,” Polly said. “I can’t guess. You tell me.”
“Father Christmas.”
“Father Christmas?” said Polly. She was so much surprised that she nearly opened the front door by mistake.
“Father Christmas,” said the person on the doorstep. “With a sack full of toys. Now be a good little girl, Polly, and open the door and I’ll give you a present out of my sack.”
Polly didn’t answer at once.
“Did you say Father
Christmas?” she asked at last.
“Yes of course I did,” said the wolf loudly. “Surely you’ve heard of Father Christmas before, haven’t you? Comes to good children and gives them presents and all that. But not, of course, to naughty little girls who don’t open doors when they’re told to.”
“Yes,” Polly said.
“Well, then, what’s wrong with that? You know all about Father Christmas and I’m pretending to be—I mean, here he is. I don’t see what’s bothering you and making you so slow.”
“I’ve heard of Father Christmas, of course,” Polly agreed. “But not in the middle of the summer.”
“Middle of the what?” the wolf shouted through the door.
“Middle of the summer.”
There was a short silence.
“How do you know it’s the summer?” the wolf asked argumentatively.
“We’re making Mother’s birthday cake.”
“Well? I don’t see what that has to do with it.”
“Mother’s birthday is in July.”
“Perhaps she’s rather late in making her cake?” the wolf suggested.
“No, she isn’t. She’s a few days early, as a matter of fact.”
“You mean it’s going to be her birthday in a day or two?”
“You’ve got it, Wolf,” Polly agreed.
“So we’re in July now?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not Christmas?”
“No.”
“Not even if we happened to be in Australia? They have Christmas in the summer there, you know,” the wolf said persuasively.
“But not here. It’s nearly half a year till Christmas,” Polly said firmly.
“A pity,” the wolf said. “I really thought I’d got you that time. I must have muddled up my calendar again—it’s so confusing, all the weeks starting with Mondays.”
Polly heard the would-be Father Christmas clumping down the path from the front door; she went back to the currants.
The weeks went by; Mother’s birthday was over and forgotten, holidays by the sea marked the end of summer and the beginning of autumn, and it was not until the end of September, when the leaves were turning yellow and brown, and the days were getting shorter and colder, that Polly heard from the wolf again. She was in the sitting room when the telephone rang; Polly lifted the receiver.
“I ont oo thpeak oo Folly,” a very muffled voice said.
“I’m sorry,” Polly said politely, “I really can’t hear.”
“Thpeak oo FOlly.”
“I still can’t quite hear,” Polly said.
“I ont oo—oh BOTHER these beastly whiskers,” said quite a different voice. “There, now can you hear? I’ve taken bits of them off.”
“Yes, I can hear all right,” Polly said puzzled. “But how can you take off your whiskers?”
“They weren’t really mine. I mean they’re mine, of course, but not in the usual way. I didn’t grow them, I bought them.”
“Well,” Polly asked, “how did you keep them on before you took them off?”
“Stuck them on with gum,” the voice replied cheerfully. “But I haven’t taken that bit off yet. The bit I took off was the bit that goes all round your mouth. You know, a moustache. It got awfully in the way of talking, though. The hair kept on getting into my mouth.”
“It sounded rather funny,” Polly agreed. “But why did you have to put it on?”
“So as to look like the real one.”
“The real what?”
“Father Christmas, of course, silly. How would I be able to make you think I was Father Christmas if I didn’t wear a white beard and all that cotton-woolly sort of stuff round my face, and a red coat and hood and all that?”
“Wolf,” said Polly solemnly—for of course it couldn’t be anyone else—“do you mean to say you were pretending to be Father Christmas?”
“Yes.”
“And then what?”
“I was going to say if you’d meet me at some lonely spot— say the crossroads at midnight—I’d give you a present out of my sack.”
“And you thought I’d come?”
“Well,” said the wolf persuasively, “after all I look exactly like Santa Claus now.”
“Yes, but I can’t see you.”
“Can’t see me?” said the wolf, in surprise.
“We can’t either of us see each other. You try, Wolf.”
There was a long silence. Polly rattled the receiver.
“Wolf!” she called. “Wolf, are you there?”
“Yes,” said the wolf’s voice, at last.
“What are you doing?”
“Well, I was having a look. I tried with a small telescope I happened to have by me, but I must admit I can’t see much. The trouble is that it’s so terribly dark in there. Hold on for a minute, Polly. I’m just going to fetch a candle.”
Polly held on. Presently, she heard a fizz and a splutter as the match was struck to light the candle. There was a long pause, broken by the wolf’s heavy breathing. Polly heard him muttering: “Not down there . . . Try the other end then . . . Perhaps if I unscrew this bit . . . Let’s see this bit of wire properly . . .”
There was a deafening explosion, which made poor Polly jump. Her ear felt as if it would never hear properly again. Obviously the wolf had held his candle too near to the wires and something had exploded.
“I do hope he hasn’t hurt himself,” Polly thought, as she hung up her own receiver. “It sounded like an awfully loud explosion.”
She saw the wolf a day or two later in the street. His face and head were covered with bandages, from amongst which one eye looked sadly out.
“Oh, Wolf, I am so sorry,” said kind Polly, stopping as he was just going to pass her. “Does it hurt very much? It must have been an awfully big explosion.”
“Explosion? Where?” said the wolf, looking eagerly up and down the street.
“Not here. At your home. When you rang me up the other day.”
“Oh that!” said the wolf airily. “That wasn’t really an explosion. Just a spark or two and a sort of bang, that’s all. I just got the candle in the way of the wires and they melted together, or something. Nothing to get alarmed about, thank you, Polly.”
“But your face,” Polly said, “the bandages. Didn’t you get hurt in that explosion?”
“No. But that gum! Whee-e-e-w! I’ll tell you what, Polly,” the wolf said impressively, “don’t ever try and stick a beard or whiskers on top of where your fur grows with spirit gum. It goes on all right, but getting it off is—well! If it had been my own hair it wouldn’t have been more painful getting it off. Next time I’m going to have one of those beards on sort of spectacle things you just hook over your ears. Don’t you think that would be better?”
“Much better.”
“Not so painful to take off?”
“I should think not,” Polly agreed.
“Well you just wait till I’ve got these bandages off,” the wolf said gaily, “and then you’ll see! My own mother wouldn’t know me.”
Perhaps it took longer than Polly expected to grow wolf fur again: at any rate it was a month or two before Polly heard from the wolf again, and she had nearly forgotten his promise, or threat, of coming to find her. It was just before Christmas, and Polly was out with her mother doing Christmas shopping. The streets were crowded and the shop windows were gay with silver balls and frosted snow. Everything sparkled and shone and glowed, and Polly held on to Mother’s hand and danced along the pavements.
“Polly,” said her mother. “Would you like to go to the toy department of Jarold’s? I’ve got to get one or two small things there, and you could look around. I think they’ve got some displays of model railways and puppets, and they generally have a sort of Christmas fair with Father Christmas to talk to.”
Polly said yes, she would very much, and they turned in at the doors of the enormous shop and took a luxuriant gilded lift up to the third floor, to the toy department. It really
was fascinating. While her mother was buying coloured glass balls for the Christmas tree, and a snowstorm for Lucy, Polly wandered about and looked at everything. She saw trains and dolls and bears; she saw puzzles and puppets and paperweights. She saw bicycles, tricycles, swings and slides, boats and boomerangs and cars and carriages. At last she saw an archway, above which was written “Christmas Tree Land.” Polly walked in.
There was a sort of scene arranged in the shop itself, and it was very pretty. There were lots of Christmas trees, all covered with sparkling white snow, and the rest of the place was rather dark so that all the light seemed to come from the trees. In the distance you could see reindeer grazing, or running, and high snowy mountains and forests of more Christmas trees. At the end of the part where Polly was, sat Father Christmas on a sort of throne. There was a crowd of children round him and a man in ordinary clothes, a shop manager, was encouraging their mothers to bring them up to Father Christmas so that they could tell him what they hoped to find in their stockings or under the tree on Christmas Day.
Polly drew near. She thought she would tell Father Christmas that what she wanted more than anything else in the world was a clown’s suit. She joined a line of children waiting to get up to the throne.
The child in front of Polly was frightened. She kept on running out of line back to her mother, and her mother kept on putting her back in her place again.
“I don’t want to go and talk to that Father Christmas,” the little girl said, “he isn’t a proper Father Christmas.”
“Nonsense,” her mother said sharply. “Don’t be so silly. Stand in that line and go up and tell him what you want in your stocking like a nice little girl.”
The little girl began to cry. Polly, looking sharply at Father Christmas, couldn’t help rather agreeing with her. Father Christmas had the usual red coat and hood and a lot of bushy white hair all over his face. But somehow his manner wasn’t quite right. He certainly asked the children questions, but not in the pleasantest tone of voice, and his reply to some of their answers was more of a snarl than a promise.
The Complete Polly and the Wolf Page 7
