“You’re welcome,” Polly said. She still hadn’t seen the wolf.
“We’ve brought him some presents. Here’s an apple,” one of the younger shepherds said, holding out the apple.
“Thank you. I’m sure he likes apples,” Polly said.
“And I’ve brought a lamb,” another shepherd said.
The wolf thought this was a good moment to give a loud Baa . . . a . . . a. Everyone jumped, and the child carrying the stuffed toy lamb said, “You aren’t supposed to say that.”
“Why not? I’m a sheep, aren’t I? ‘Baa’ is sheep language,” the wolf said.
“You didn’t say that when we rehearsed yesterday,” the first shepherd said.
“I wasn’t here yesterday. But I am today. Baa . . . aa,” the wolf said, annoyed.
“He’s made me forget what I was supposed to say,” the smallest shepherd said, and burst into tears.
“It doesn’t matter, just go on. Thank you for the lamb, it will be nice for Jesus to play with when he’s older,” Polly said, quickly.
“You’re not the lamb I’m giving Jesus, this is,” said Timmy, showing the toy lamb.
“I don’t think he’s a lamb at all. He’s got black paws,” another shepherd said.
“Some sheep do have black feet. And black noses,” the wolf said.
“He’s got a long black tail that sticks out behind, too,” the second shepherd said.
“I haven’t! Have I?” The wolf tried to look over his shoulder. There was a tearing sound and the wolf was aware that the fleece was slipping badly and a large safety pin at the back of his neck had come open.
“I don’t think he’s a sheep either,” Joseph said, interested, and coming round to look.
“I’m not! I’m a wo– ” the wolf began, but Polly interrupted. “Of course he’s a sheep. He came in with the shepherds, didn’t he? And he’s wearing a sheep’s coat.”
“Polly, you know who I am. Tell them,” the wolf complained.
“Children, get on with the play, it’s time you made room for the kings,” Miss Wright hissed from the side of the stage.
“I expect you want to get back to watch your flocks by night,” Polly said politely to the shepherds, who began to shuffle towards the way out. To the wolf she whispered, “You stay here. And don’t forget, you chose to be a sheep in this play, now you’ve got to act like one.”
“You mean I’ve got to go on saying ‘Baa’?”
“That’s right. Just ‘Baa’ and nothing else.”
“Don’t I get anything to eat?”
“Sheep eat grass. I don’t think there is any grass round here. There’s a little straw if you’d like that.”
“Don’t sheep eat meat ever? Not a mouthful of leg?” the wolf asked, gazing at the fat little leg of one of the three kings who were now preparing to offer their gifts to the baby Jesus.
“Certainly not! Thank you very much, that’ll make a nice smell in this stable,” Polly said to the third king, who had just given her a box supposed to contain myrrh.
“But I’m not an ordinary sheep. And I’m hungry!” the wolf said, rather too loud. The fat-legged king turned round and said, “Shh! It’s my turn to talk now. We’re going home without seeing Harold again because we know he means to try to kill your baby. That’s all. Bye-bye.”
“Who’s Harold?” the wolf asked, wondering whether this was someone who shared his taste in food.
“Herod, not Harold. Don’t talk, Wolf. You’re not supposed to say anything but ‘Baa’.”
“But that’s silly.”
“Sheep are silly. If you wanted to do something clever, Wolf, you ought to have acted a different part.”
“So I’ve got to go on being a silly sheep and I can’t catch anyone? Not even you?”
“I’m afraid so. I’m sorry, Wolf. Joseph and I have got to go now. But you can stay for a bit and go on being a sheep, if you want to. Until we’ve all gone home, then you can go back to being a stup– to being a wolf again. Come on Joseph, it’s time we went to Egypt,” said Clever Polly, and left.
5. You Have to Suffer in Order to Be Beautiful
THE WOLF stood in front of his long mirror and looked at himself all over.
“Nothing wrong there. Long legs, lean, healthy body, kind, intelligent face. No two ways about it, I’m a good-looking fellow,” he thought. He pulled in his stomach and bent a front leg to make the muscles stand out. “And I’m not really overweight. I’ve got big bones, that’s all.
“I’ve been making a mistake. I shouldn’t have told Polly that what I really want is to eat her. I should have pretended that I admired her. In stories, the girl always falls for the man who says he wants to marry her . . . Ugh!” The wolf shook his head. “Why are they always so keen on marriage? But if I pretended to want to marry Polly, then when I’d got her home with me . . . Yes, that’s it! I shall woo her. After all, it wasn’t always handsome young princes those girls fell for. Look at Beauty and the Bea—. Well, Polly isn’t exactly Beauty, so she can’t expect to get a Prince.”
“Yes, Mr Woolf. And may I ask how you came to hear of me?” the immensely smooth, pink-cheeked doctor asked the wolf, who was sitting on the opposite side of an elegant desk in a consulting room in a private health clinic.
“I saw your advertisement . . .”
“I never advertise. It is not allowed in medical practice,” the doctor said, displeased.
“I read something in the newspaper that said you could work miracles. Make people look different.”
“Perhaps miracles is a slight exaggeration. But certainly many of my clients tell me that they are very happy with what I am able to do for them. So what can I do for you?” the doctor asked.
“It’s a very delicate matter,” the wolf said.
“Ah! Perhaps you have some special reason for coming to see me at this moment in time?” the doctor suggested.
“Yes, I have. A very special reason.” Because if I look quite different, and Polly doesn’t recognize me, I’ll have a better chance of catching her, had been the wolf’s clever idea.
“An affair of the heart, perhaps? There is some girl you wish to approach? But so far, you have not dared?”
“I can dare, all right. But she won’t listen to me.”
“You wanted to make some changes to your appearance?” the doctor asked.
“What sort of thing do you suggest?” the wolf asked.
“Well, for instance, noses. Not everyone is satisfied with the nose they have. I can alter a nose to almost anything you might require. Roman? Snub? Classical? Short and appealing? Long and learned? Now in your case, Mr Woolf, I should suggest a certain curtailing . . .”
“Doing what? My tail’s all right,” the wolf exclaimed in alarm.
“Curtailing. Shortening. It has no effect on the olfactory function, I assure you.”
“Olfactory?” the wolf asked.
“You’ll be able to smell with it as well as before.”
“So I should hope! If I couldn’t smell, I might just as well not have a nose,” the wolf said.
“Then there are teeth. I work in conjunction with a first-class dental surgeon. Now it seems to me that your teeth leave quite a lot to be desired. If you’ll forgive my saying so, they are on the large side and a little discoloured. It happens in later life, you know.”
“Later life! I’m in my prime!” the wolf said, angrily.
“Of course. I did not mean to imply . . . But you might like to consider a really good set of dentures. Something smaller and whiter. I assure you, it would have a really dramatic effect on your general appearance.”
“Dentures? What are dentures?” the wolf asked.
“New teeth. Fitting perfectly so that there would never be any danger of them slipping and so causing you unnecessary embarrassment,” the doctor said.
“You mean false teeth?”
“Exactly. Dentures.”
“Would they be able to gnaw bones?”
“C
ertainly.”
“And chew up a juicy little gir—, a juicy little Pol— , juicy little anything?”
“They would function perfectly,” the doctor said.
“He’s awfully difficult to understand. It must be being so clever makes him use all these long words,” the wolf thought. Aloud he said, “I’m not sure about false teeth. I’ll think about it.”
The doctor looked him over carefully. “Then, if you don’t mind my suggesting it, we might tackle the problem of superfluous hair.”
“What’s that?” the wolf asked, puzzled again.
“Superfluous hair. You are more bountifully endowed with hair than most of us.” The doctor himself, indeed, was almost completely bald. “We could tackle that with electrolysis, though I must warn you that it would take time.”
“What do you want to do with my hair?” the wolf asked, not having understood a word of this last sentence.
“Remove it. Not all of it, of course. Just some around the upper part of the face, to give you a more open, friendly expression.”
“I’ve got a friendly expression,” the wolf said.
“Of course, Mr Woolf. Delightful expression. But a leetle difficult to see with that very luxuriant growth of hair over the forehead and cheeks. I can’t help feeling that this young woman you are interested in might respond to— shall we say, a less hirsute approach.”
“Her suit? Or my suit? But I haven’t got one!” the wolf cried, thoroughly confused by all this language.
“She might like you better without so much hair,” the doctor said, annoyed at having to use ordinary words.
“What was that word you used about my hair?” the wolf asked.
“Superfluous. Means you have too much of it,” the doctor said.
“Not that one. Electro something.”
“Electrolysis. It is a means of eliminating super-unwanted hair, by the insertion of an electric needle into each hair root . . .”
“Sounds uncomfortable. Does it hurt?” the wolf asked.
“Only for a moment,” the doctor assured him.
“And that gets rid of the lot? All in a moment?”
“No, no, Mr Woolf. Each individual hair has to be dealt with separately.”
“Wow! And these extra teeth? I suppose it doesn’t hurt to have another set to put in when you need them?”
“Having first extracted the original dentition.”
“Uh?” said the wolf.
“First of all, we take out everything you’ve got there.”
The wolf shuddered.
“What about the nose job?”
“That necessitates a few days in hospital while we break down the bones of your face and construct a totally new form. Sometimes we have to take a little skin from a leg or arm in order to cover the new nasal apparatus.”
“Take skin from whose leg or arm?”
“Yours, of course, Mr Woolf. It is a perfectly simple procedure.”
“I’ll think about it,” the wolf said. He did not mean to think about it at all. He saw that all these operations were going to hurt a lot, and he did not mean to suffer that much even in order to catch stupid little Polly.
“My secretary will see you on your way out,” the doctor said, rising from his chair and shaking the wolf’s paw rather coolly. He did not believe that this client was likely to come back to ask for a complete reconstruction of his appearance, however much he wanted to get his girl.
“That will be one hundred and fifty pounds, Mr Woolf,” the charming secretary said, as the wolf passed through her office.
“A hundred and fifty? Pounds? You must be joking!” the wolf snorted.
“Will it be cash or a cheque?” the charming secretary asked.
“I haven’t got my cheque book on me just now,” the wolf said. This was not surprising, as he did not have a cheque book anywhere.
“Perhaps you could drop a cheque in the post this afternoon?” the secretary said.
“Perhaps,” the wolf said, and left. “A hundred and fifty pounds, for threatening to break the bones in my face, skin my leg, take out all my teeth and electrocute my fur? The man’s a monster!” the wolf thought as he hurried down the street.
•
“Polly,” the wolf said, looking over the fence into Polly’s front garden, where she was lazily swinging herself in the sun.
“Yes, Wolf?”
“Would you like me better if I didn’t have so much hair . . . fur?”
“Bald all over, d’you mean? No, I wouldn’t. I think you’d look terrible,” Polly said.
“Suppose I had an extra lot of teeth? False ones?”
“What for? You’ve got enough, haven’t you?”
“Or if I had my nose shaped differently?”
“But you wouldn’t look like a wolf if you had a different nose,” Polly said.
“But would you like me any better?”
“No. I like you just as you are,” Polly said, quite affectionately.
“Wonderful! Then come with me, Polly. Now! To my home. Make me the happiest of . . . wolves.”
Polly laughed. “No, thank you, Wolf. I like you a lot, but I don’t trust you for a minute. I like you where you are now—on the other side of the garden fence. And like a wolf, not with your long nose made short or with all your teeth pulled out. Just go on being yourself, and I’ll stay like I am. Safe,” said Clever Polly.
6. Kind Polly and the Wolf in Danger
THIS STORY is different from all the other stories about Polly and the wolf, because it doesn’t start with the wolf planning how he can have Polly to eat.
One day, Polly went out to do some shopping for her mother in the village. She had bought a cauliflower and some potatoes at the vegetable shop, and a pound of sugar and half a pound of biscuits at the grocer’s, and she was thinking of going home again, when she heard a loud noise coming from a side street. She ran to the corner and looked along the street and saw a crowd of people all very angry about something. The people were shouting and someone was howling. Polly thought that she knew that howl, and she hurried up the street.
As she got nearer the crowd, she could hear more distinctly what the people were saying.
“Ought not to be allowed!”
“Would worry the sheep!”
“Cause a dog fight!”
“Steal a hen!”
“These beasts are dangerous. Should be behind bars!”
“Might bite a baby!”
“Could easily kill a child!”
“Someone muzzle it!”
“Someone shoot it!”
Polly began to believe that she knew whom the voices were talking about, but she still hadn’t managed to get through the crowd to see if she had guessed right. Now she heard other voices saying other things.
“Interesting shape. Don’t know if I’ve ever seen one exactly like that before. A new breed, perhaps?”
“Look it up in the Gazette.”
“Like to have a look at its bones. Preserve the skeleton in formaldehyde . . .”
“Curious sound it makes. Don’t know if I’ve ever heard a dog howl exactly like that . . .”
Polly pushed through the inner ring of trousers and skirts and saw a wooden tea chest set up on end. Out of the top of the tea chest stuck the head of the wolf, and over this head, someone had thrown a net, which was held down by the edges of the chest. The wolf was in a bad way. His fur was draggled, he was trembling and he was looking this way and that with huge, terrified eyes.
“It’d make a splendid exhibit for the local museum. Stuffed, of course,” a large man in a tweed jacket was saying. Polly saw a glimmer of hope cross the wolf’s face, and she realized that he was thinking of being stuffed as an agreeable sensation after a large meal. But the hope disappeared the next moment, as a woman added, “You have to be careful how you kill an animal you want to stuff. A bullet through the heart is fine, but whoever shoots must know how to be accurate.”
“I’m against killing. This
animal should be in a zoo,” another woman said.
“Doesn’t look in very good shape to me. Death might be a mercy,” a man said.
“Shouldn’t be shot, though. Call in the local vet.”
“Spoilsport! Why not have a chase? We could get the hounds. Creature would enjoy a good run for its money,” said another voice.
“Cruel! I object! No blood sports here!” said someone else.
“In any case its body should be preserved for expert examination.”
“Call the police!”
“Send for the Master of the Hunt!”
“Fetch my gun!”
The voices grew louder and more quarrelsome. Everyone seemed to be shouting at everyone else. Polly managed to edge closer. “Wolf!” she said.
The wolf turned his miserable eyes towards her.
“You here?” he said.
“What happened? Why are they all so angry? What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything,” the wolf said sullenly.
“I don’t believe that. Tell me the truth.”
“I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. I’ve seen plenty of people do it.”
“Go on.”
“I’ve often seen people go round sniffing at other people’s babies.”
“Sniffing at them?” Polly asked, surprised.
“Bending right over their prams, with their noses in the children’s faces. And you can hear them smacking their lips.”
“Probably kissing them.”
“Nonsense! Sniffing to see if they’re ready to eat. Smacking their lips when they know what a good meal they’re going to have.”
“Is that what you did?” Polly asked.
“Only one or two. The first was a scrawny little thing, not worth its salt. The second wasn’t any good, either. It hit me. I did not hit back. Naturally I didn’t want a struggle.”
“And then?”
“Then I saw exactly what I needed. Small, plump, juicy-looking. Not unlike you, a few years ago. I was just unwrapping it, to make sure it was perfectly fresh, when this woman came dashing out of the shop and started screeching and calling me all sorts of names, and then a couple of men came up and got hold of my legs, and they held my jaws so that I couldn’t speak, and they pushed me into this revolting box and covered me with a net.”
The Complete Polly and the Wolf Page 21
