There was an even longer pause. Then Polly’s grandmother put her head out of a window and looked down at the wolf.
‘I beg your pardon?’ she said.
‘I am Polly,’ said the wolf firmly.
‘Oh,’ said Polly’s grandma. She appeared to be thinking hard. ‘Good afternoon, Polly. Do you know if anyone else happens to be coming to see me today? A wolf, for instance?’
‘No. Yes,’ said the wolf in great confusion. ‘I met a Polly as I was coming here – I mean, I, Polly, met a wolf on my way here, but she can’t have got here yet because I started specially early.’
‘That’s very queer,’ said the grandma. ‘Are you quite sure you are Polly?’
‘Quite sure,’ said the wolf.
‘Well, then, I don’t know who it is who is here already,’ said Polly’s grandma. ‘She said she was Polly. But if you are Polly then I think this other person must be a wolf.’
‘No, no, I am Polly,’ said the wolf. ‘And, anyhow, you ought not to say all that. You ought to say, “Lift the latch and come in”.’
‘I don’t think I’ll do that,’ said Polly’s grandma. ‘Because I don’t want my nice little Polly eaten up by a wolf, and if you come in now the wolf who is here already might eat you up.’
Another head looked out of another window. It was Polly’s.
‘Bad luck, Wolf,’ she said. ‘You didn’t know that I was coming to lunch and tea today instead of just tea as I generally do – so I got here first. And as you are Polly, as you’ve just said, I must be the wolf, and you’d better run away quickly before I gobble you up, hadn’t you?’
‘Bother, bother, bother and bother!’ said the wolf. ‘It hasn’t worked out right this time either. And I did just what it said in the book. Why can’t I ever get you, Polly, when that other wolf managed to get his little girl?’
‘Because this isn’t a fairy story,’ said Polly, ‘and I’m not Little Red Riding Hood. I am Polly and I can always escape from you, Wolf, however much you try to catch me.’
‘Clever Polly,’ said Polly’s grandma. And the wolf went growling away.
5. The Visible Wolf
Polly was walking down the High Street one morning, when on the opposite side of the road she saw the wolf behaving in a very peculiar manner. Sometimes he put out his tongue at passers-by, sometimes he did a few dance steps in the gutter. Several times he seemed to be aiming a blow at someone’s head. A few people were turning round to stare at him, but on the whole most of them were too polite to appear to take any notice.
Polly was not afraid of the wolf when there were plenty of other people about, so she crossed the road and came up to where he was standing, making faces at a baby in a perambulator.
‘Wolf,’ she said, ‘you’re behaving disgracefully. What on earth do you think you’re doing?’
The wolf jumped about four inches in the air as Polly spoke and even after he had come down to earth again he couldn’t stop shaking.
‘You frightened me,’ he said plaintively, his teeth chattering so that Polly could hear them. ‘I didn’t expect you to speak to me. How do you know I am here?’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Polly said impatiently. ‘Of course I know you’re here. I can see you, for one thing.’
‘You can see me?’ the wolf said, apparently very much surprised.
‘Of course I can. And from what I can see you are behaving very badly. I’ve never seen such an exhibition.’
‘But you can’t see me,’ the wolf protested.
‘I certainly can.’
‘But I’m invisible.’
Polly was, in her turn, so much surprised that she couldn’t speak for a moment. When she could, she asked, ‘You’re what?’
‘I’m invisible. You can’t see me. No one can!’
‘Tell me, Wolf,’ Polly asked kindly, ‘do you feel quite well? Have you got a headache? The sun has been rather hot this morning.’
‘It’s not the sun. I’m invisible, I tell you. I don’t know how you come to be able to see me, if you really can, but I’m invisible to everyone else.’
‘How do you know?’ Polly asked.
‘Well for one thing, she told me I would be.’
‘Who did?’
‘The witch I bought the spell from, of course. It was very expensive, but I thought it would be worthwhile. Because now I’m invisible I can come when you aren’t suspecting anything and catch you and eat you without any of this arguing. It’s always argue argue with you,’ the wolf went on sadly. ‘As soon as I’ve got it all nice and clear in my head about when I’m going to eat you, you have to start talking and then I get muddled. Somehow you always seem to get me so that I don’t know if I’m coming or going, if I’m full or I’m empty. And it always ends the same way,’ he finished disconsolately. ‘And that’s with you going off scot free and me going off still hungry.’
‘So you went to a witch and she made you invisible,’ Polly prompted him. ‘She can’t be much good at her job,’ she added.
‘She didn’t make me invisible there and then. She told me what to do to get invisible.’
‘What?’
‘Well, I had to go out when the moon was full – that was the day before yesterday – and pick birch bark and mix it with – here!’ said the wolf suddenly. ‘I’m not going to tell you this spell for nothing. I had to pay for it and if you want it you’ll have to pay too.’
‘I don’t want it,’ said Polly. ‘Thank you. It obviously isn’t any good.’
‘Who said so?’ said the wolf indignantly.
‘I do. It’s supposed to make you invisible, isn’t it? Well, you’re as visible as anything. Anyone can see you. You’re as thick and as black and as solid as ever you were.’
‘I’m not,’ cried the wolf. ‘I know I’m not. I’ve been doing all sorts of things to test it out and I’m sure I’m invisible. No one has taken any notice of me at all; and they would have if they’d seen me.’
‘What have you done? I saw you sticking your tongue out and dancing and making silly faces, but what else have you done?’
‘You know how I always walk on my hind legs when I’m with people so as to look like them?’ the wolf began. ‘Well, I walked all the way up from the butcher’s to here on four legs and no one so much as turned to look at me.’
‘There’s no reason why they should,’ Polly said. ‘They probably thought you were an outsize dog.’
The wolf snorted angrily but he went on:
‘I made a horrible face at a baby in a pram and it didn’t take any notice at all.’
‘I saw you doing that,’ Polly agreed. ‘If I’d been the baby I’d have made some horrible faces back. But babies get so used to people making faces at them, they don’t even look any longer. Go on.’
‘You see that drinking-trough for horses over there? I got into that and had a bath with a piece of soap I happened to have on me. I washed all over, right in front of everyone, and no one blinked an eyelid.’
‘They probably agreed that you needed that bath, and in that case they’d be too polite to stare. Is that all you did, Wolf?’
The wolf looked rather sheepish.
‘It did seem as if I must be invisible by then,’ he said. ‘And I wanted to do something people couldn’t help being surprised by if they could see it.’ He stopped.
‘What did you do?’ Polly asked encouragingly.
‘Of course I know it’s childish,’ the wolf said. ‘It’s not a thing I do in the ordinary way.’
‘No?’
‘Well, I haven’t for years. It was just a test, you understand?’
‘I expect I will when you tell me what it was.’
‘I wanted to be quite out of the ordinary.’
‘I daresay it was all most peculiar. But do let me into the secret.’
‘I just ran up and down the street a little.’
‘Is that all?’ Polly asked, disappointed.
‘Well, I believe I said “All change”, once or t
wice.’
‘All change what?’
‘And I had a whistle. Occasionally I used it.’
‘I see. You ran, you whistled, and you said “All change”.’
‘In between whiles I may have said “Chuff”.’
‘Just “Chuff”?’
‘No, I believe I said “Chuff-Chuff”. More lifelike, you know. The sound an engine makes when getting up steam.’
‘Oh, playing trains!’ Polly exclaimed. ‘Did you say anything else?’
‘There’s a peculiar noise the carriages make going over the rails. It sounds more like “Duppidy-dee” than anything else.’
‘So sometimes you said “Duppidy-dee”?’
‘And then “Duppidy-dur. Duppidy-dee, duppidy-dur, duppidy-dee, duppidy-dur”. Remarkable imitation, isn’t it?’
‘Remarkable,’ agreed Polly. ‘You ran, you all changed, you whistled, you chuffed, you duppidy-deed, duppidy-durred. Anything else?’
‘I did have a small green flag to wave.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Somehow or other, in the past, I seem to have acquired a porter’s cap,’ said the wolf carefully.
‘So you wore that?’
‘And my sheriff’s badge of course. It all adds to the effect.’
‘And where was this remarkable performance, Wolf?’ asked Polly.
‘Here,’ said the wolf simply. ‘In the High Street.’
‘And no one so much as looked at you?’
‘Well of course there was a certain amount of sound effect,’ the wolf admitted. ‘And as I was invisible, no doubt some people were surprised to hear the – er – impressions of a train without there being anything to see.’
‘So some notice was taken?’
‘People looked in my direction, yes, but seeing nothing they were rather at a loss to explain what they heard. Their expressions of amazement were quite amusing.’
‘Oh, my poor Wolf,’ Polly exclaimed. ‘You have made a fool of yourself. Of course they could see you –’
‘They could not,’ interrupted the wolf. ‘I was invisible.’
‘Wolf,’ said Polly seriously, ‘if you are invisible, can anyone see you?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Not even you yourself?’
‘Naturally I couldn’t.’
‘Wolf,’ said Polly gently. ‘Just look down at the ground where your invisible feet are.’
The wolf looked down.
‘Someone has left two very dirty paw marks there,’ he said severely.
‘They are your own paws, Wolf.’
‘And those black things above – are they –?’
‘They are your legs.’
The wolf stretched out first one paw and then the other and looked at them carefully. He turned round and scrutinized his tail. Then he squinted down and saw the end of his nose.
‘Am I all visible, Polly?’ he asked in a very small voice.
‘All of you, Wolf.’
‘Every single bit of me?’
‘Everything, Wolf.’
‘Do you mean they all saw me being a train? Did they see me shunting? Did they know it was me saying “Chuff-chuff”?’
‘And “Duppidy-dee, duppidy-dur”, Wolf.’
‘I’ll never be able to hold up my head here again,’ said the wolf miserably. ‘Making a public spectacle of myself in the street. I’ll never be able to look a baby in the face from now on. It’s all your fault, Polly. I’d never have tried to become invisible if I hadn’t wanted to get you to eat. Never mind. Visible or invisible, I’ll get you yet and then I shall be revenged.’
And Polly let him have the last word this time, as she felt rather sorry, as he went disconsolately away, for such a very, very visible wolf.
6. Huff, Puff
It was a very calm and sunny day when Polly heard a most peculiar noise outside the house. It sounded like a small storm. She could hear the wind whistling round the corner of the house, but when she looked up at the treetops they were not even swaying; everything was perfectly still.
The noise stopped. Polly went on reading.
Suddenly it began again. The clean washing hung out at the back of the house blew about violently for a short time, but the treetops and clouds took no notice. It was very odd.
Again the noise stopped as suddenly as it had begun.
Polly went to the sitting-room window which looked out in front of the house, but she could see nothing. She went to the kitchen at the back of the house and looked out.
She saw the wolf. He was leaning against the garden wall and fanning himself with a large leaf off a plane tree. He looked hot and exhausted. As Polly looked, he stopped fanning, threw away the leaf, and began some extraordinary contortions.
First he bent himself double and straightened up again. Then he made one or two huge bites at nothing and appeared to swallow some large mouthfuls of air. Then he threw back his head and snorted loudly. Finally he bent double again and started to breathe in. As he breathed in he stood up and swelled out. He swelled and he swelled till from being a thin black wolf he became quite a fat black wolf, and his chest was as round as a barrel.
Then he blew.
‘So that was the extraordinary noise,’ Polly said to herself. She opened the kitchen window and leant out. The curtains blew about behind her in the wolf-made wind.
‘What are you doing, Wolf?’ she called out to him, as his breath gave out and the noise got less.
‘Practising,’ the wolf said airily. ‘Just practising.’
‘What for?’
‘Blowing your house down, of course.’
‘Blowing down this house?’ Polly asked. ‘This house? But you couldn’t. It’s much too solid.’
‘It looks solid I admit,’ the wolf said. ‘But I know that’s all sham. And if I go on practising I’ll get plenty of push in my blow and then one day – Heigh presto! (that’s what they always say in books),’ he added, ‘– over it will topple and I shall eat you up.’
‘But this is a brick house,’ Polly objected.
‘Well, I know it looks like brick, but it can’t really be brick. It’s mud really, isn’t it now?’
‘You’re thinking of the Three Little Pigs,’ said Polly. ‘They built their houses of mud and sticks, the first two did, didn’t they?’
‘Well, yes I am,’ the wolf admitted. ‘But there’s only one of you so I thought you’d probably build three houses. One of mud, and the next of sticks, and then a brick one.’
‘This is the brick one,’ said Polly firmly.
‘Did you build the others first?’ asked the wolf.
‘No, I didn’t. And I didn’t build this one either. I just came to live in it.’
‘You’re sure it’s not mud underneath that sort of brick pattern?’ asked the wolf anxiously. ‘Because when I was huffing and puffing just now, it seemed to me to give a sort of wobble. As if it might fall down some time if I blew hard enough.’
Polly felt a little frightened, but she was fairly sure the wolf couldn’t blow down a brick house, so she said, ‘Try again and let me see.’
The wolf doubled himself up, filled himself out and then blew with all his might. The blades of grass and the rose bushes and the clean washing waved madly in the wind, but the house never stirred at all.
‘No,’ said Polly, very much relieved. ‘You aren’t blowing down this house. It really is brick and I don’t see why you should expect to be able to blow down a brick house. Even the wolf in the three little pigs’ story couldn’t do that. He had to climb down the chimney.’
‘I thought if I practised long enough I might be able to,’ the wolf said. ‘After all, that incident with the pigs was a long time ago. We’ve probably learnt a lot about blowing since then. The wonders of Science, you know, and that sort of thing. Besides I had a book.’
From the grass beside him he picked up a small paper-covered volume and showed it to Polly. It was called How to Become an Athlete.
‘An
Ath what?’ Polly asked, leaning even further out of the window.
‘Good at games, that means,’ the wolf explained. ‘Wait a minute, there’s a bit here …’ He shuffled through the pages. ‘Ah, yes, here we are. Deep breathing. By constant practise of the following exercises, considerable respiratory power may be attained.’
‘What sort of power?’
‘You can blow very hard. I’ve been doing the exercises for nearly a week and I can blow much harder than before.’
‘But not hard enough to blow this house down,’ Polly said.
‘Don’t you think, with some more practice –?’ the wolf said hopefully.
‘No,’ said Polly. ‘I don’t.’
The wolf looked crestfallen for a moment, but then he cheered up again.
‘Never mind,’ he said quite gaily. ‘If I can’t blow it down with my breathing exercises I’ll blow it down another way.’
‘How?’ asked Polly.
For answer the wolf dived behind some bushes and pulled out a large shabby suitcase. From inside the suitcase he produced a pair of bellows.
‘Look,’ he said proudly. ‘This will do the trick. These bellows – wait a minute.’
He searched about in the suitcase and brought out a dirty piece of paper, which he unfolded and read.
‘These bellows are guaranteed to produce a wind equal to a gale of forty miles an hour if used properly. Guaranteed, you see, Polly,’ said the wolf, looking at her to see if she was impressed.
‘But only if you use them properly,’ Polly pointed out. ‘Anyhow, how much is a gale of forty miles an hour?’
‘A great lot,’ the wolf assured her. ‘A terribly strong wind. You could hardly stand up in it. In fact I shouldn’t think you could stand up in it. And now,’ he added, twirling the bellows round and then pointing them at Polly, ‘I am going to blow the house down.’
‘Wait a minute,’ said Polly, rather alarmed. ‘I don’t want the house to fall down on my head.’
She left the window and sat down on the floor under the kitchen table.
‘Now I’m ready,’ she called out. ‘All right, Wolf.’
She heard the wolf spit on his paws before he picked up the bellows.
Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf Page 2
