The Complete Polly and the Wolf

by Catherine Storr

  “The mistake I’ve made has been to try to catch Polly by tricks. I’ve tried to take her by surprise. To pounce. Of course she has always run away. Now I understand the right way of going about it, I shall try a quite different method,” the wolf said to himself.

  A few days later, Polly was sitting on the swing in the front garden when she saw the wolf walking carefully down the road. On his head he wore a small crown of gold-coloured paper. In one hand he carried a short stick. When he reached the garden gate he stopped and leaned over it.

  “Good afternoon, Polly,” he said.

  “Good afternoon, Wolf,” Polly replied.

  “I hope you are well,” the wolf said.

  “I’m very well, thank you, Wolf.”

  “I wonder . . .” the wolf said, looking round. His eye fell on a flower-bed of tulips which had been carefully planted there several months before, by Polly’s mother.

  “I wonder if you would be kind enough to get me a glass of water? I’ve come a long way in the heat and dust,” he said.

  Polly was a kind girl. When the wolf put out a long red tongue, turned his eyes upwards and panted thirstily, she didn’t like to refuse. She went into the house and came out in two or three minutes’ time, carrying a tumbler of cold water. To her surprise, when she offered it to the wolf, he didn’t immediately take it. Instead he handed her a large bunch of bright yellow tulips.

  “For the fairest in the land,” he said, bowing. His paper crown fell off. He quickly picked it up and put it back, tipped crazily over one ear.

  Polly looked round the garden.

  “Wolf! They’re our tulips. You’ve picked them all. They’re Mother’s best flowers. She’ll be furious,” she said.

  “Nothing is too good for a beautiful princess like you,” the wolf said, not seeming to care about Polly’s mother.

  “And I’m not a princess,” Polly said.

  “To me you will always be a princess. And I’m a prince. Can’t you see my crown? And my sceptre?” the wolf asked. He pointed to the lop-sided paper crown and flourished the small stick in his left paw.

  “I don’t understand . . .” Polly began.

  “You can’t help being stupid,” the wolf agreed. Then, remembering his new idea, he added quickly, “Not stupid. Just a little slow to understand the new situation, perhaps.”

  “What am I supposed to do with these?” Polly asked, looking at the bunch of tulips in dismay.

  “Put them in water, of course,” the wolf said, taking the flowers from her and plunging them into the tumbler of water which Polly had brought from the house.

  “I thought you were so hot and thirsty,” Polly said.

  “That was a cunning trick so that you would go into the house and I could pick these beautiful flowers for you,” the wolf said, very much pleased with himself.

  “Why do you want to give me flowers?”

  “Aha!” the wolf said.

  “Aha what?” Polly asked.

  “Aha! I have a new plan. I see now, Polly, that I have been wrong in trying to catch you unawares. I shouldn’t have tried to take you by surprise. The right thing to do with beautiful young girls is not to pounce, but to approach them gently. To woo them. That is why I have come here today to give you flowers. And the usual three gifts, of course,” the wolf said.

  “The usual three gifts? What are they?” Polly asked.

  “According to my book, always things that are very difficult to find. For instance, the smallest dog in the world. Or the most beautiful princess. But of course, I don’t have to go looking for her, because that’s you,” the wolf said in a hurry.

  “What else?” Polly asked, interested.

  “You might ask me to build a superb palace outside your gates in a single night.”

  “Would you be able to do that?”

  “I should have a very good try,” the wolf said modestly.

  “Are there any other gifts to choose from?”

  “You might want a golden bird. Or the water of life. Or a dress made of moonshine,” the wolf said.

  “You mean you could find any of those things?”

  “Of course. A prince can always accomplish the task that has been set for him,” the wolf replied.

  “Like killing a dragon?” Polly asked.

  The wolf hesitated. Then he said, “Are there any dragons around here nowadays? As far as you know?”

  “I don’t think there are many. But it’s one of the things brave princes often have to do before they get the princess.”

  “Does your father have any special dragon in mind? A reasonably mild dragon, who wouldn’t object to putting up some sort of fight, just for the look of it? And who would then pretend to be defeated and to die? Just for a short time, you understand. Something like that?” the wolf asked.

  “No, I don’t think my father knows any dragons,” Polly said.

  “Any of the neighbours been complaining about having dragons in the garden lately? Or in the house?” the wolf inquired.

  “Not that I’ve heard,” Polly said.

  “Then let’s forget about dragons, shall we? If nobody round here is being bothered by dragons at present, there doesn’t seem much point in going out and looking for them. Let sleeping dragons lie, is what my old aunt always said. Or, indeed, die. Let sleeping dragons die. Peacefully, in their lairs. We don’t want to cause any disturbances, do we?”

  Polly remembered some of the earlier attempts the wolf had made to catch her. She didn’t feel sure that he had always tried to avoid disturbing people. There had been the time when he had meant to blow up her house, which wasn’t exactly a peaceful occupation.

  “Well? Which is it to be? The palace? The golden bird? The smallest dog in the world? Which do you want first?” the wolf asked.

  “I think I’d like the smallest dog, please,” Polly said. She had not forgotten that she would never be allowed to keep a large pet. A very small dog might perhaps be hidden in her toy cupboard. Or, if he was small enough, even in the box where she kept her special treasures.

  “I shall be back tomorrow,” the wolf said. And went.

  It was late in the afternoon of the next day that the wolf arrived at Polly’s garden gate. He was again wearing the paper crown, but this time he had left the stick behind and instead, in his paw, he was carrying a brown paper bag.

  He leaned over the gate.

  “Polly!”

  “Yes, Wolf?”

  “I have brought you what I promised. The smallest dog in the world.”

  He handed Polly the brown paper bag. She looked eagerly inside.

  “There isn’t any tiny dog. Just a lot of nuts,” she said.

  “Of course. Who ever heard of keeping tiny dogs loose in paper bags? They’d get terribly tangled up in each other’s legs. Don’t you know that the smallest dog in the world always comes out of a nut?” the wolf said.

  “I don’t know that I’ll be allowed to keep so many dogs,” Polly said, looking into the bag again. There were at least forty hazelnuts there.

  “I daresay there won’t be a dog inside every single nut. You know what they say. Don’t count your nuts until they are cracked,” the wolf said.

  “Do you know which nuts have dogs and which haven’t?” Polly asked.

  “Not exactly. They look rather alike. We’d better open a few . . .”

  “I’ll go and fetch the nut-crackers,” Polly said, starting for the house.

  “Oh no, you don’t. I know what you mean to do. You’ll go into the house and never come out again. I can crack nuts with my teeth,” the wolf said.

  “I’ve always been told not to try,” Polly said.

  “You have such small teeth. Feeble. Now, choose your nut, and I’ll crack it open for you,” the wolf said.

  Polly took a nut from the bag and handed it to the wolf. The wolf cracked it between his teeth and held out the two halves of the shell to Polly. But inside was no tiny dog, only an ordinary nut kernel.

  “You
picked the wrong one,” the wolf accused Polly.

  “You said they all looked alike,” Polly reminded him.

  “Let’s try another,” the wolf said.

  The second nut also had nothing but a kernel inside. The wolf quickly ate it. He pointed to the paper bag, and Polly brought out a third. But this one contained nothing at all.

  “Perhaps they’re the wrong sort of nut,” Polly suggested.

  “Nonsense. The book says quite clearly that the smallest dog in the world came out of a hazelnut. The trouble is that you haven’t found the right one. Get on with it. He must be in there, somewhere,” the wolf said.

  As fast as he could crack them, the wolf opened nut after nut. But each one proved disappointingly to be nothing but a perfectly ordinary hazelnut. Most of them had kernels, which the wolf quickly swallowed. He did not offer Polly any. Faster and faster the shells fell around him, and he had hardly eaten one kernel before he was cracking the next nut. The supply in the bag dwindled until there was only one nut left. Polly was just taking it out of the bag, when suddenly the wolf spluttered and choked.

  “Hauch! Hawk! Haroosh! Ahaugh! A-haugh! A-choo! Hauch! Hack! Harrock!” the wolf exclaimed.

  “Did it go down the wrong way?” Polly asked.

  The wolf coughed and nodded his head. He still couldn’t speak.

  Polly waited till he had recovered. Then she said, “Wolf! There’s only one nut left.”

  “Splendid. Then this is THE nut. Prepare to meet the smallest dog in the world.”

  The wolf cracked the last nut with great care. He spat out the shell and held out his paw with the contents of the nut on it for Polly to see.

  “It’s not a tiny dog,” Polly said.

  “Are you quite sure?” the wolf asked.

  “Quite. It’s just an ordinary nut kernel. Like in all the other nuts,” Polly said.

  “There must be another nut left,” the wolf said.

  Polly looked in the paper bag.

  “No. That was the very last one.”

  The wolf scratched his head.

  “Extraordinary! Out of all those nuts, not one containing the smallest dog in the world! Not one of them, in fact, containing a dog of any sort or size.”

  He thought about this.

  “I suggest that we forget about the dog. Or, better still, we do a deal. After all, I did bring you a great many nuts. Suppose we say that twenty nuts count the same as one very small dog? That would be generous. Considering the size of the dog.”

  “No. It has to be the smallest dog in the world, or it doesn’t count at all,” Polly said.

  “Of course! I was forgetting. One of those nuts did contain the smallest dog in the world,” the wolf cried.

  “I didn’t see it,” Polly said.

  “No. Most unfortunately, you didn’t. Why? Because, entirely by mistake, I swallowed him. He was in that last nut but one. The nut that went down the wrong way. You remember?”

  “I remember. But . . .” Polly said.

  “That was the smallest dog in the world.”

  “How do I know that?” Polly asked.

  “If it wasn’t, why was that the only nut that made me choke? All the others went down the way they should have gone. But the dog inside that nut didn’t just follow down the long red lane like an ordinary kernel. He chose a different path. I remember now the feeling on my tongue. As if a very small animal was trotting across it. In the wrong direction,” the wolf said.

  “I don’t believe it,” Polly said.

  “I also heard him bark. Before he’d got right down. You must have heard him too.”

  “I didn’t . . .”

  “But you must agree that that nut was quite different from all the others,” the wolf urged.

  “Because you were in too much of a hurry.”

  “He was in too much of a hurry. That’s the trouble about these very small dogs. They don’t wait to find out what would be best for them.”

  “Anyway, you haven’t given me any sort of dog,” Polly said.

  “I brought him here,” the wolf protested.

  “And then you ate him.”

  “It was a mistake. I didn’t mean to,” the wolf cried. But it was no good. Polly had gone into the house and shut the door.

  “I shall be back. Tomorrow I shall be here with the second gift,” the wolf promised. “I’ll probably be building you a palace tomorrow,” he said to the firmly shut door.

  But Polly did not come out again, and the wolf went sadly home.

  8. The Wolf Goes Wooing (2)

  “POLLY! I have come with the second gift,” the wolf said, from his usual place outside the garden gate.

  “That’s very kind of you, Wolf,” Polly said.

  “Come a little nearer and I will lay it at your feet.”

  “I’ll come this near. That’s enough,” Polly said, standing a little distance from the gate. The day before, when she had gone right up to the gate to hand the wolf a glass of water, and again to look into a paper bag, hoping to see the smallest dog in the world, she had forgotten how little he was to be trusted.

  “It’s sad that you should be so young and so suspicious,” the wolf said.

  “It would be sadder still if I weren’t suspicious and never lived to be not so young,” Polly said.

  “Ah well. Let’s talk about something else. I have brought you the second of the three gifts with which I am going to win you.”

  “What is it?” Polly asked.

  The wolf held up a string bag.

  “It was quite extraordinary. I thought that this task might be the most difficult. I wondered if it might not prove impossible. But I’m delighted to be able to tell you that one can buy them anywhere. They are not even very expensive.”

  “What are they?” Polly asked. She was impatient to know what the second gift could be.

  The wolf put a paw into the bag and took out a large yellow apple.

  “Golden apples.” He rolled one under the gate towards Polly. She picked it up.

  “I don’t think this apple is made of gold, Wolf,” she said.

  “Excuse me. I have the shopkeeper’s word for it. ‘What are those apples?’ I asked, and he said, ‘They are Golden.’ ”

  Polly took a large bite out of the apple. “I wouldn’t be able to do that if they were really made of solid gold,” she said.

  “There must be some mistake. Perhaps the next one . . .” the wolf said, rummaging in the bag. He took out a second apple. It looked exactly like the first.

  “That one isn’t gold either. Bite it and see,” Polly said.

  “Oh no! You don’t catch me that way! You want me to be stupid enough to try to bite an apple made of real gold, so that I blunt my teeth. Then I shouldn’t ever be able to eat you up like a piece of crisp bacon. Oh, no!”

  “Just as you like. Don’t eat it then. But it’s a waste, because even if these apples aren’t really golden, they are delicious.”

  “That’s what the shopkeeper said. He said they were golden and delicious,” the wolf said. He smelled the apple in his paw and cautiously scraped it against his teeth. A moment later the second apple had disappeared.

  “The third apple must be the golden one. The man very kindly gave me two delicious apples, and one, this last one, is golden. You couldn’t expect more than that for thirty pence,” the wolf said as soon as his mouth was empty enough to speak.

  “That apple isn’t golden either,” Polly said, looking at it as the wolf drew it from the string bag.

  “But the shopkeeper assured me . . .” the wolf began. Polly interrupted him.

  “Wolf! This sort of apple is called Golden Delicious. That’s its name. Like I’m called Polly. Like other apples are called Coxes, or Granny Smiths. This yellow sort of apple is called Golden Delicious. It doesn’t mean that they are really made of gold,” Polly said.

  “Why didn’t he explain properly? I told him distinctly that I wanted golden apples, and he sells me these stupid things,
” the wolf said, angry. He threw the third apple over the gate. It rolled across the grass to the sandpit, where small fat Lucy was sitting, burying a doll she didn’t care for. Without looking up, Lucy picked up the apple and began to eat it.

  “Now that horrible child is eating my last apple. I am leaving you. Grieved. Hurt. Disappointed. But I shall be back soon with the third and last gift,” the wolf said, turning away from the gate. He took off the gilt paper crown. He obviously thought it was no longer necessary to pretend to be a prince come a-wooing on this occasion. He threw the string bag over his shoulder and trotted away down the road.

  Polly wondered what the third and last gift would be. In the stories she had read there were certainly three gifts, but she couldn’t guess which the wolf would choose to bring. A magic ring would be useful. So would a cloak that made the wearer invisible. Best of all would be Fortunatus’s purse, which always had a gold coin in it, however much you spent from it. “But I hope he doesn’t bring me a beautiful princess. I wouldn’t know what to do with her,” Polly thought.

  It was nearly a week later, on a fine and sunny afternoon, when Polly, sitting on the grass in the front garden, and colouring a large picture of a hungry dragon and a beautiful princess, heard a curious sound from the other side of the hedge.

  She went up and peered through the leaves and twigs.

  Outside in the road the wolf was standing. He seemed to be speaking to someone, but who the someone was, Polly couldn’t see.

  “Why not?” the wolf asked.

  There was no answer.

  “Just this one more, and I’ll never ask for another,” the wolf said.

  No reply.

  “You owe it to me. I bought you. I paid good money for you. You belong to me. It’s your duty to do what I tell you,” the wolf scolded.

  Polly edged closer to the privet hedge. The wolf seemed to be speaking to someone below him, right down on the road level. Perhaps, Polly thought, he had at last discovered the smallest dog in the world.