“And if I didn’t eat you up, you’d stop trying to get me?”
The wolf considered.
“Look,” he said, “I can’t say I’ll stop for ever, because after all a wolf is a wolf, and if I promised to stop for ever I wouldn’t be a wolf any more. But I promise to stop for a long time. I won’t try any more today.”
“And what about after today?” Polly insisted.
“The first time I catch you,” the wolf said dreamily, “if you ask very nicely I’ll let you go because you’ve let me off today. But after that, no mercy! It’ll be just Snap! Crunch! Swallow!”
“All right,” Polly said, recollecting that so far the wolf had not ever got as far as catching her successfully even once. “You can go.”
The wolf ducked his head gratefully and trotted off. Polly saw him threading his way between the busy shoppers in the High Street.
But she sat contentedly in the hot sun and wondered what was the difference between a fat pink pig and a plate of sausages and bacon. Not much, if she knew her wolf!
9. The Kidnapping
ONE DAY Polly was in the kitchen, washing up dreamily at the sink. Outside the sun was shining hot and bright, and a delicious smell of newly cut grass came in through the open window. Bert, the odd-job man, was piling up the grass cuttings in a corner of the garden to make a compost heap; Lucy, Polly’s little sister, was helping him, or thought she was helping, by carrying small piles of grass to and fro, sometimes in the right direction, but more often in the wrong one.
“Bert,” said a voice from the other side of the house. “Bert! Come here a minute, will you?”
“Wharris’it?” Bert called back, but he went on piling up his compost heap.
“See you about something very important!” the voice said urgently.
Polly could see Bert say bother; she couldn’t hear it, but the way he put down the rake showed exactly how he was feeling. Then he went off along the path in the direction of the voice. Lucy, alone in the back garden, filled a small tin pail with gravel and wandered over the lawn, sprinkling it with little stones.
Suddenly a large black Something jumped over the garden wall, snatched up Lucy and was off again before Polly had quite realized what was happening. But she knew directly who it had been. Only the wolf would come into the garden like that and steal small fat Lucy. For what? It was a horrible thought.
For the first time in all her dealings with the wolf, Polly was frightened. But she knew she must do something quickly, so she ran out of the kitchen, without even waiting to dry her hands, out through the garden and into the hot dusty road outside.
She looked up and down, but there was no one in sight. A scatter of small pebbles led off to the right.
“He must have gone home,” Polly thought. “He wouldn’t take Lucy anywhere she’d be recognized, it wouldn’t be safe for him.”
The pebbles led in the direction of the wolf’s house. Polly had never gone that way alone before, and she didn’t much like doing it now, but the thought of Lucy in the wolf’s power drove her on.
Outside the wolf’s door she stopped. She wasn’t sure how she was going to get Lucy out; she had no plans and she didn’t want to have to go into the house herself. She put up her hand to ring the door bell; then she took it down again. She actually lifted the knocker, but let it fall back silently. Polly, for once, was at a loss.
•
She was just summoning her courage to let the wolf know she had arrived, when something went hurtling past her head. Someone inside the house had thrown a stick out of the window just beside the porch, and it had only just missed hitting her in the face. A moment later a large black body followed the stick out of the window. The wolf retrieved the stick and jumped neatly back through the window again.
“Good dog,” Polly heard Lucy’s voice saying, “fetch stick.”
“I’m not a dog, you silly little girl,” the wolf’s voice said crossly. “I’m a wolf, and I’m going to—”
“More,” said Lucy. She always said more for something she had enjoyed the first time—more cake, more dance, more Red Riding Hood. The stick flew out of the window again, this time further from Polly’s head.
“Fetch stick! Good dog!”
The wolf came, rather more slowly, out of the window and went back again with the stick in his mouth.
“Clever dog,” Lucy said approvingly.
“You’re stupid,” the wolf said, really annoyed. “You’re almost as stupid as Polly. Listen, stupid little Lucy, I’m NOT a dog, I’m a wolf, and I’m going to eat you all up.”
“Good wolf,” said Lucy contentedly. “Fetch stick.”
For the third time the stick came out and was fetched by a reluctant and now definitely sulky wolf. As he landed inside the room again, he turned and slammed the bottom of the window down hard.
“Now you can’t throw the stick out again,” he said. “You can’t reach up to the top opening. Now do listen properly, Lucy. I am not a dog, do you understand?”
“Not dog,” said Lucy agreeably.
Polly moved up to the window and peered in. It was not a very comfortable-looking room, a sort of parlour, furnished stiffly and scantily, with hard knobbly-looking chairs and a shiny horsehair sofa. A large dog basket containing a piece of striped blanket near the fireplace seemed to indicate that the wolf sometimes slept here; there was a round table in the middle of the room, partly covered by a red woollen crochet mat.
Lucy was sitting comfortably in the dog basket. She had discovered a hole in the stripy blanket and she was picking at the edges and enlarging it with apparent satisfaction. The wolf was sitting at the table, looking annoyed, tapping on the table, biting his nails, and showing every sign of being anxious and jumpy.
“I am NOT a dog, Lucy,” he said again, impressively.
Lucy took no notice of this remark.
“I am a wolf.”
“Wolf,” Lucy agreed. She stuck her thumb through the hole in the blanket and said, “Look! Thumb!”
“I am a wolf and I’m going to eat you all up.”
This was a game with which Lucy was quite familiar. She climbed out of the basket and approached the wolf with her mouth wide open.
“Eat you all up,” she repeated, and, reaching the wolf, sank her small sharp teeth into his front left leg.
“Ow! Wow!” the wolf said indignantly, pulling away from her sharply. “Don’t do that! It hurts, you horrible little creature!” He nursed his wounded limb tenderly with the other paw and looked at Lucy in hurt surprise.
But Lucy was delighted. She had seldom had a playfellow who acted pain and surprise so well, and she was encouraged to improve on her efforts. She walked round behind the wolf, saw his irresistible feathery tail hanging out between the bars of the chair, and gave it a sharp pull.
The wolf turned round with a yelp of astonishment and pain.
“Eat you all up,” said Lucy, opening her mouth at him again and laughing heartily. She made another successful snap at his other front paw.
“You beastly little girl,” the wolf said, now nearly in tears. “You don’t understand the simplest remark. I didn’t bring you here to bite me and pull my tail and make me do stupid, useless things like jumping in and out of windows to fetch your horrid stick as if I were a tame dog. Can’t you see it isn’t you that’s going to eat me up, it’s me that is going to eat you up. Now. For my lunch. No,” he added, looking at the marble-pillared clock on the mantelpiece, which permanently told the time of a quarter past four. “For my tea.”
“Tea,” said Lucy. She was rather like an echo sometimes, picking on the one familiar word out of a long speech. “Lucy’s tea.”
“Not for you,” the wolf said firmly.
“TEA,” said Lucy, equally firmly and a good deal louder.
“No tea for you. For me,” the wolf explained.
“TEA,” said Lucy at the top of her voice. Her face suddenly grew brick red and her mouth went square. An enormous tear rolled down
her cheek and made a considerable pool on the oilcloth floor.
“Don’t cry!” the wolf said, alarmed. “For goodness’ sake don’t cry. And don’t shriek. Someone might hear, and anyhow I can’t bear children who cry, it makes me go funny all over.”
“Tea,” Lucy said in a quieter voice, but the wolf recognized the dangers of delay.
“Yes, yes,” he said soothingly, “tea for Lucy.”
“Lucy’s chair,” said Lucy, climbing up and sitting on it expectantly. No more tears appeared, and her colour was miraculously restored to normal.
“That’s the chair I always sit on,” the wolf complained.
“LUCY’S CHAIR,” Lucy said. Her colour began to rise alarmingly, and her mouth began to set into corners.
“Yes, yes, Lucy’s chair.” The wolf pulled a sort of cross-legged stool up to the table and sat on it, trying to look as if he were enjoying himself.
“Butter,” Lucy demanded.
The wolf slipped off his stool and disappeared out of the door. When he came back a minute or two later, he was carrying a tray on which he seemed to have loaded everything he could think of that Lucy could possibly want for tea. There was a large brown steaming teapot, a rusty battered kettle, a sugar bowl, a chipped mug with a picture of an engine on it, a cocoa tin with no lid, half full of biscuits, a plastic plate, the end of a brown loaf, and a sizeable piece of butter in a green soap dish. He put the tray on the table and looked at Lucy nervously.
“Tea,” said Lucy approvingly. She leant forward and seized the mug, looked into it, found it empty, and held it out to the wolf.
“Tea,” she said again. “Lucy’s tea. Butter.”
The wolf hastily picked up the teapot in a paw that trembled slightly and tipped it to pour into the mug. But when Lucy saw the colour of the liquid that came out of the spout, her face changed.
“Tea!” she said in disgust. “No tea. Milk!”
She took the mug away just before the wolf removed the teapot. A stream of nearly boiling tea cascaded down to the floor and splashed on his foot.
“Ow! That hurts! You’ve made me hurt my foot,” he cried reproachfully. But Lucy was not interested in the wolf’s troubles.
“MILK,” was all she said, but the wolf knew better now than to delay. He left the room and was back again with a jug of milk quicker than Polly would have believed possible. He filled Lucy’s mug, and she drank thirstily, and then held out the mug again for more.
“But this is all I’ve got,” the wolf pleaded. “The milkman doesn’t call again until tomorrow, and I meant to make a milk pudding for supper.”
“MORE MILK,” Lucy said.
“I’ll just keep enough to put in my tea,” the wolf said, apologetically, pouring out about half the mugful.
“MORE,” said Lucy. “Lucy thirsty,” she explained in a friendly way, as she drained the last remnants of the unfortunate wolf’s milk supply. She looked round the table for further replenishment. “Butter.”
The wolf, obviously at the end of his resources, pushed the soap dish towards her. Lucy frowned.
“Bread ’n’ butter,” she said, clearly pitying anyone who did not understand the simplest rules of behaviour.
The wolf cut a large slice of bread and spread it with a moderate supply of butter. Lucy took it, and began to lick the butter. The wolf stared at her in horror. He sat in a stupefied silence till Lucy, having licked the bread quite dry of its butter, held it out to him and said emphatically, “More.”
“More?” said the wolf. He could hardly believe his ears.
“More butter,” said Lucy impatiently.
“But you haven’t eaten the bread. I mean to say, people don’t just go on having more butter on the same piece of bread. That isn’t what bread and butter means,” the wolf protested.
“MORE BUTTER.”
“Oh, very well. Have it your own way.” The wolf spread a generous layer of butter on the slice of bread and handed it back to Lucy.
He poured himself out a cup of bitter black tea. There was no milk left, so he sweetened it liberally with sugar, and began to drink, making a face as he tasted how nasty it was. But Lucy had noticed his last action and had had a new idea.
“Sugar,” she said, dropping her bread, now licked nearly clean again, on the floor. She held out her hand for the sugar basin.
“No,” said the wolf, with unusual firmness. “I’m not going to let you polish off all my sugar.” He hid the sugar basin behind him, on his stool. “Have a biscuit?” He held the cocoa tin out towards Lucy.
Lucy looked doubtfully into the tin.
“Choc bikkit?” she enquired.
“No-o—but there’s a very nice one here. Look!” and the wolf held up a crumbling Oval Osborne.
“No bikkit,” said Lucy.
“Nice biscuit,” said the wolf.
“No bikkit.”
“No, no. Certainly. It’s a repellent biscuit,” the wolf said, putting it back in the cocoa tin. “You don’t want a nasty biscuit like that. I’ll find you a really good biscuit this time.”
He scrabbled busily about at the bottom of the tin, then produced the same biscuit and held it out to Lucy invitingly.
“Sugar,” said Lucy.
“No,” said the wolf.
“SUGAR.”
“No.”
Lucy abandoned this unprofitable conversation and looked round the room for inspiration.
“Lucy have a apple?” she asked politely.
“I haven’t got any apples,” the wolf replied.
“Banana?”
“I haven’t any bananas.”
“Then I have bun,” Lucy said decisively. She was sure there could be no one who couldn’t produce at least bun, even if they were so unfortunate as not to have apples and bananas.
“I haven’t got—” the wolf began, but he changed his mind. He was reluctantly learning a little cunning too. He looked into the biscuit tin for the third time and gave a start of well-acted surprise.
“Why, what’s this?” he cried. “I was just going to say I hadn’t got any buns, but there’s one left at the bottom of the tin.”
He held the Oval Osborne biscuit out to Lucy in a trembling paw. She gave him an enchanting smile and took it.
“Gank you.”
It seemed to Polly that this was the moment to ring the front door bell. She pressed it firmly, and kept her finger there for some time.
The door was opened abruptly. An exhausted, frayed wolf, visibly at his last resources, stood before her.
“Polly!” he said. “You’ve come in the nick of time. Another five minutes and I don’t know what I should have done. For goodness’ sake come in and take her away before she eats up everything I’ve got in the house. Do you know,” he went on, trembling with rage, as he led the way from the front door to the room where Lucy was finishing her biscuit, “that she even tried to eat me?”
Lucy was sitting comfortably and crumbily on the wolf’s special chair when Polly came into the room. She looked at Polly without any special surprise and said agreeably, “Good morning, Polly.” She always said “Good morning,” whatever the time of the day, finding it easier to pronounce than “Good afternoon.”
“I’ve come to take you home,” Polly said. She had decided to pretend that the whole affair had been carried on under the politest circumstances. “Get down from your chair, Lucy, and thank the kind wolf for asking you to tea.”
Lucy obediently struggled off the chair and made for the door as fast as she could.
“Say thank you,” Polly reminded her as they reached the front door again.
“Gank you, Wolf,” Lucy said. “Lucy come back soon.”
“Not too soon,” the wolf pleaded. He looked very limp as he held the door open for them to go out.
“And now,” Lucy said, as, holding Polly’s hand, she trotted down the short garden path, “Lucy go home and have TEA.”
Behind her Polly heard the wolf groan. He had at last met his match.
Tales of Polly and the Hungry Wolf
Illustrated by Jill Bennett
1. The Enchanted Polly
THE WOLF sat gloomily in his kitchen. Once, in happier days, he had actually had Polly there for a short time. Now all he had to comfort him was a nearly empty larder and his small library of well pawed-over books. It was one of these he was reading now.
He read about clever animals who caught beautiful little girls and kept them, sometimes as servants, sometimes as wives. Sometimes they meant to eat them. But it was disappointing that though all the tigers, lions, dragons, foxes, wolves and other animals seemed to have very little difficulty in catching their prey, most of them somehow or other failed to keep them. The beautiful little girls generally managed to escape at the last minute, often by tricks which the wolf considered very unsportsmanlike.
The story he was reading just now was about a dragon chasing a princess, who had once been in his cave, but had then run away. She couldn’t run as fast as the dragon could move, but she turned herself first into a fly, then into an old woman, and lastly into a bridge over a river. The dragon never managed to recognize her in any of her disguises, and in the end he was drowned in the river under the princess-bridge.
“Terrible the things these girls get up to! No wonder I’ve never been able to catch that Polly. Here am I, a simple wolf, while she can turn into almost anything she chooses. It’s all so unfair!” the wolf exclaimed. Then he remembered that even if he couldn’t take on different shapes, he at least had brains. “I’ll show her! She shan’t deceive me. Whatever she pretends to be, I shall know it’s really her. I’m not stupid like that dragon. I am clever,” the wolf thought. He had heard that fish was good for the brains, so he opened a tin of tuna and gobbled it down for supper. In case that didn’t do the trick, he slept with another tin of tuna under his pillow that night. He very cleverly decided not to open it first, in case the oil made a mess on the bedclothes. “Wow! I am brilliant this evening,” he said to himself.
The Complete Polly and the Wolf Page 12
