The Complete Polly and the Wolf

by Catherine Storr

  “A hyperactive child, perhaps?” the doctor asked.

  “Uh?”

  “She is too active for you? Never sits still? Talks too quickly and too much?”

  “Much too much,” the wolf agreed, glad to be understood at last.

  “Sleeps badly?”

  “I’m not sure about that.”

  “Is she aggressive?”

  “Uh?”

  “Aggressive. Fights with her mates. Won’t do as she’s told.”

  “I don’t know about her mates. She certainly never does what I tell her,” the wolf said.

  “Argues a lot?”

  “Never stops arguing. I can’t tell you. Whatever I say or whatever I do, it’s always talk, talk, argue, argue, till I don’t know whether I’m standing on my head or my tail . . . my feet,” the wolf said.

  “Is she in the waiting room? Let’s have her in and I’ll take a look at her,” the doctor said.

  “No. You can’t. She’s not there. Anyway, what good would just looking at her do?” the wolf asked.

  “Bring her in tomorrow, then. Anything else bothering you?” the doctor asked, in the sort of voice that means, “I haven’t got time to listen to you any more, you’d better leave.”

  “I’m bothered about not getting enough to eat. I’m hungry!” the wolf said, hoping that this would make the doctor more sympathetic.

  The doctor looked more interested. “Unnatural appetite?” he suggested.

  “Depends on what you mean by unnatural. It’s quite natural for a wo– for the sort of person I am.”

  “Three hearty meals a day, is that it?”

  “When I get them,” the wolf said sadly.

  “Good mixed diet? Plenty of veggies and fibre?”

  “Veggies? Fibre?” The wolf shuddered.

  “What, then? Convenience foods? Ready-made frozen stuff?”

  “Meat,” the wolf said.

  “Just meat? Nothing else at all? That’s not what I call a healthy diet. Not to mention the expense.”

  “I can eat cake. Polly once cooked a delicious cake,” the wolf remembered.

  “Who is Polly? Never mind. What you need is an appetite depressant,” the doctor said, drawing his prescription pad towards him and beginning to scribble rapidly.

  “A what?” the wolf asked, alarmed.

  “Appetite depressant. Something to take the edge off your appetite so that you don’t get these terrible feelings of hunger. And try to eat some fibre, there’s nothing like it for filling the stomach. Good for the bowels too,” the doctor said.

  “There’s nothing wrong with my stomach. Or my bowels,” the wolf said, indignant.

  “I’m surprised. Have this made up at the chemist, and come back and see me in a couple of weeks. And do, for goodness’ sake, try to get down some bran or wholemeal bread for breakfast. And, by the way, if you’d like to bring your little girl, I might be able to suggest a diet which will quieten her down a bit. Next please!” the doctor said briskly, opening his door and bustling the wolf out.

  “Bran! What does he think I am, a rabbit? Whoever heard of a wolf eating bran?” the wolf asked himself as he walked down the street towards the chemist. While he was waiting for his prescription to be made up, he passed a tempting-looking butcher’s and nipped in just in time to secure a large piece of steak for his supper. He hadn’t much faith in the doctor’s advice for himself, but he decided that it would be worthwhile finding out what he might suggest to make Polly easier to catch.

  •

  It was nearly three weeks later that Polly saw the wolf waiting at the school gate at the end of the afternoon’s lessons.

  “Hi!” the wolf said as she came down the path.

  “Hi, Wolf! What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for you,” the wolf said.

  “I’m not going to walk home with you,” Polly said, remembering that there might not be many people about in the road where she lived.

  “No, no. Of course not. That’s not what I wanted to ask you.”

  “What did you want to ask?”

  “I wanted to tell you that I have consulted a very clever doctor.”

  “Have you been ill? Poor Wolf!” Polly said, kindly.

  “I have not been ill. I was consulting him about you.”

  “But I haven’t been ill either.”

  “He says you are hyperactive.”

  “No, I’m not! What’s that mean anyway?” Polly asked.

  “Means you can’t keep still and that you talk too much and argue too much and run about too fast, and it isn’t good for you.”

  Polly began to understand what the wolf meant. She said, “You mean I can run faster than you?”

  “Only when I’ve just had dinner. Not now, this minute . . .”

  “I’m not running. I’m staying here till my friends are ready to go home.”

  “Ah. In that case . . . But no. I want to advise you about your diet.”

  “You mean what I eat?”

  “That’s what diet means.”

  “Go on, then. You can tell me, but I don’t promise to do it.”

  “This very clever doctor says you should cut out dairy foods.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Milk. Cheese. Butter. Anything made with milk or cheese or butter. He says it will make you feel much better.”

  “What about you, Wolf? Did he tell you what you should eat, too?”

  “He was wrong,” the wolf said.

  “What did he say?”

  “He said . . . And I don’t like bran and I hate vegetables.”

  “What for? Why bran? Why vegetables?”

  “To fill me up when I get hungry. Instead of . . .” The wolf stopped in the middle of his sentence. He did not mean to let Polly know that the doctor thought he ate too much meat. After all, what was Polly herself? Not bran. Certainly not a vegetable.

  “Why didn’t he tell you not to eat cheese and milk and all that?”

  “I am not hyperactive,” the wolf said smugly.

  “When he says hyper-whatever it is, he means clever,” Polly said.

  “That’s not what he said.”

  “But he did say that talking and arguing a lot was hyper-something?”

  “Ye-es.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to be clever, Wolf?”

  “I am clever,” the wolf said.

  “Clever-er, then? Cleverer than me?”

  The wolf considered this. “It might be an advantage, yes.”

  “Then you ought to be eating all the things he said I shouldn’t. Lots of butter and milk and cheese and cream. Then you’d always be able to run faster than me and you’d be cleverer than everyone else. That’s sense, isn’t it?”

  The wolf thought about this for some time. It did seem sense. If those foods made Polly as quick and clever as she was, they ought to have the same effect on him.

  “Why do you think the doctor told me to eat bran and vegetables, then?” he asked.

  “Perhaps he guessed that you wanted to catch me to eat and he didn’t like the idea,” Polly said.

  “But that’s unfair! It was me went to see him and asked for his advice! He ought to have been on my side!” the wolf cried.

  “People are unfair,” Polly said, with feeling.

  “He cheated me!”

  “But anyway, now you know what to do,” Polly said.

  “I’m going straight off to the dairy. I’m going to drink a pint of double cream and eat as much cheese as I can swallow. And next time we meet, stupid little Polly, you’ll see, I shall run like the wind and my brain will be working so well it will dazzle you. As for you, you’d better go on my diet. Cabbages and bran. We shall meet again,” the wolf cried as he left the school gate and walked sedately down the road.

  Polly looked after him. “Oh, Wolf! You certainly aren’t dazzling me with your cleverness yet,” she thought.

  4. In Sheep’s Clothing

  THE WOLF stood in the school playground, wa
iting for the children to come out at the end of the afternoon. The parents, mostly mothers, who were waiting there too, looked at him suspiciously and none of them came over to speak to him. He was so very dark, so very hairy. None of them could remember noticing him there before.

  Boys and girls began straggling out of the building. Some clutched large sheets of paper on which they had painted portraits of their families. Others carried egg-boxes, cardboard cylinders from used toilet rolls, empty cotton reels, shells, nuts, melon seeds and corks, from which they had made pretty and possibly useful gifts. For Christmas was coming, and the children in this school were encouraged to be generous with their time and ingenuity.

  The wolf had to wait for what seemed a long time before he saw Polly in a group of children, talking excitedly. This lot carried something different. One child had a pair of large wings in her hand, two more had long, striped robes over their arms, and Polly was carrying a baby doll wrapped in a long white shawl.

  “Hi, Wolf!” Polly called out when she saw him.

  “Hi, Polly! What’s that doll for? I thought you didn’t play with dolls.”

  “I don’t. Not much. Anyway this doll isn’t mine, she’s Lucy’s. I just borrowed her for the nativity play.”

  “What sort of play?” the wolf asked.

  “A nativity play.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s about the first Christmas. You know. Jesus being born in a stable and all that. We’re acting it the day after tomorrow, and I’m going to be Mary. She’s Jesus’ mother. It’s the best part.”

  “A play! Couldn’t I be in it too?” he said. Surely acting in a play with Polly and several other deliciously small children would give him a chance to get one of them.

  “It’s only for my class to act in. And there aren’t any more parts to go round.”

  “Who else is there besides Mary and that doll?”

  “There’s Joseph. Benjie is being Joseph. And there’re some angels. Sophie over there is an angel. You can see her wings.”

  “Why isn’t she wearing them on her back if she’s an angel?”

  “She will when we act our play. There’s an innkeeper, that’s Michael. He has to say, ‘No room, no room.’ And then we go into the stable and I have the baby.”

  “Anyone else?” the wolf asked.

  “Three kings . . .”

  “Couldn’t I be a king? I’d be very good as a king,” the wolf suggested, rather fancying himself in a crown.

  “No, you couldn’t. Derek’s one of them and the twins are being the other two. And Marmaduke’s being King Herod, who’s horrible and wants to kill all the babies.”

  “To eat?” the wolf asked.

  “I don’t think so. And there are a lot of shepherds. They don’t have much to say, so they’re the children in my class who can’t remember long speeches.”

  The wolf had brightened at the sound of shepherds. “Shepherds? With sheep?”

  “I suppose so. But no one wants to act a sheep.”

  “I would,” the wolf said.

  “You? Be a sheep? But you’re nothing like a sheep.”

  “I could act like a sheep.”

  Polly wasn’t sure that he could. “How?” she asked.

  “Baaa. Baaa . . . aa. Baa . . . a . . . baa . . . a. Baa!” the wolf said loudly. Several of the parents standing in the playground turned round to look and one or two of them laughed.

  “How was that?” the wolf said, pleased with the effect.

  “It wasn’t bad. But you don’t look like a sheep.”

  “I haven’t dressed for the part yet. After all, when I came out this afternoon, I had no idea I might be asked to be in a play.”

  “No one has asked you,” Polly said.

  “So when is the performance, Polly?” the wolf went on, taking no notice of this remark.

  “The day after tomorrow. Wolf . . .!” Polly began, but before she could finish the sentence, the wolf had gone.

  “Benjie. Sophie. Marmaduke. Not to mention Polly. And a lot of shepherds who are too stupid to say anything. I ought to get one of them,” he thought as he trotted home.

  When he got there, he went straight to his larder; this was something he always did, sometimes hoping that though he had left it nearly empty when he went out, it might miraculously have filled up in his absence. But the shelves were as bare as before. The wolf sighed, shut the larder door and walked into his sitting room where, on the floor, lay a not very clean, whitish-grey fur rug. It had belonged to the wolf’s grandfather, and how he had got it it is probably better not to know. It was, in fact, a whole sheepskin, and it was the thought of this priceless possession that had made the wolf so confident that he could take part in Polly’s nativity play.

  For the rest of that day and for most of the next, the wolf practised. He practised with pieces of string and with safety pins and elastic bands. He even tried to sew with a needle and thread. For most of the time, he practised in front of his long mirror, and at last, on the very morning of the performance, he was satisfied. He not only sounded like a sheep, he now looked like one. After a light midday meal, he carefully dressed himself in his disguise and made his way to Polly’s school, using side streets so as to avoid notice.

  He managed to slink in at a back door. He heard a gabble of excited voices coming from a classroom further along the passage and, looking cautiously through a glass door, he saw a great many children dressed for the play. He saw a couple of angels in long white nightgowns and gauzy wings. He saw two kings, exactly like each other, wearing golden crowns. He saw several boys and girls in striped robes, with pieces of material wound round their heads. One of them carried a small stuffed lamb under his arm. So these were the shepherds, the wolf guessed. On the further side of the classroom, he saw Polly in a blue dress, with a blue veil on her head, holding the doll baby by one leg, upside down.

  The wolf pushed the door open and joined the actors.

  “Hey! Who’re you pushing?” angrily asked a small stout king in a red robe edged with gold tinsel.

  The wolf swallowed a snarl and the temptation to take a mouthful out of a plump leg very near to him, and said, “I just want to get over to the shepherds.” He knew he would have to be careful until everyone was off their guard and thinking about nothing but the play. He did not want to make a disturbance, and he was particularly anxious that Polly should not see him yet.

  “Timmy! here’s one of your sheep!” the red king shouted.

  “We haven’t got any sheep,” a shepherd called back.

  “There’s one here. Don’t know who. Miss Wright must’ve got someone in extra.”

  Lucky, thought the wolf, that no one seemed surprised at this, and no one took any particular interest in him. He lay down under one of the tables pushed against the wall and amused himself by remarking which children were fatter or slower (or both) and so would be the easiest prey. After a short time he noticed that the teacher was looking over each child’s costume, hitching up the wings on one angel, tying up Joseph’s shoelaces (they came undone again a moment later) and taking the doll baby away from Polly-Mary. “You don’t have the baby in the first scene, that’s when the angel comes to tell you you’re going to have it,” she said, and put it on a chair.

  “Now, we’re all going into the hall. Very, very quiet, please. Sophie and Polly, are you ready for Scene One? The others can stand at the side and watch, but no talking and no fighting. Understand?” She gave the three kings a special glare, and led the way out of the classroom.

  The wolf trotted quietly behind the children. Along one long passage, turn a corner, another passage, and then a swing door into the hall. People were singing. The wolf caught one or two words: “. . . midwinter . . . snow . . . snow . . . long ago.” It sounded cold and disagreeable. Why not sing about something pleasant, like hot soup, a roast joint? Chips? He found himself jostled among the children and crowded into a small space at the side of the stage, with one of the kings leaning again
st his shoulder and a shepherd treading on a hind paw.

  “I wish . . .” So many juicy little arms and legs all round him. “But I must wait. If I gave myself away now, I’d never get out of here alive,” he thought, and licked his chops silently.

  The singing had stopped. The curtain was drawn back from the front of the stage, and the wolf heard, “Hi, Mary. You’re going to have a baby and it’s called Jesus.”

  “But I’m not even married!” Polly’s voice answered.

  “That doesn’t matter, because it’s God’s baby,” the angel said, and walked off. Then Joseph walked on and told Mary they had got to go on a long journey. “But I’m going to have a baby!” Mary said, and Joseph said, never mind that, she could have the baby in a hotel somewhere on the way.

  “When do we get to the shepherds?” the wolf asked a child next to him in a loud whisper. He was bored with all this talk about the baby.

  “Not till after the baby’s got born, silly,” the child whispered back.

  “No talking!” Miss Wright’s voice hissed behind them, and the wolf had to wait while Mary and Joseph were told that there was no room in the inn. “But you can use the stable, if you like,” the innkeeper said kindly.

  There was some more singing. The wolf was by now not only squashed, but also terribly hot. The children round him were all warm and excited and he was wearing an extra skin. An elastic band round one of his ankles was too tight, and a shepherd behind him was apt to tread on the fleshy part of his tail. It was a relief when Miss Thompson whispered, “Go on, Timmy, it’s the shepherds now,” and the group round the wolf moved out on to the stage.

  The lights were bright here, and for a minute the wolf’s eyes were dazzled. Then he saw Polly, in her blue veil, sitting on a stool, surrounded by bales of straw, with the doll baby on her lap. Joseph stood behind her. The shepherds moved towards her and the wolf followed them.

  “Hullo, Mary. We heard about your baby, so we’ve come to have a look at him,” the largest shepherd said.