The Complete Polly and the Wolf

by Catherine Storr

  “Your ideas are so small. Why don’t you go for something nearer your own size?”

  “You mean, like a monkey?” Polly asked. She had once seen a monkey in the pet shop. It had sat in a too small cage, looking at all the passers-by with sad, hopeless eyes.

  “Aha! It wasn’t me that said you were like a monkey. It was you,” the wolf said, triumphant.

  “I didn’t! I just said that a monkey was larger than a white mouse.”

  “I would not advise a monkey. Nasty, spiteful things. You never know when they’ll turn and bite you. Not because they are hungry, in the ordinary way, but just to be horrible. Or pull your hair,” the wolf said.

  “I’ve always thought I’d like a pony,” Polly said.

  “How can you be so . . . ordinary? Girls always want ponies.”

  “I wouldn’t mind a cat, even. Or a dog.”

  “That’s more ordinary still. Everyone has cats and dogs. Why don’t you find a pet who is more interesting than a wretched cat or dog? Someone that no one else has thought of?”

  “You mean, like a snake?”

  “Of course not a snake. I wouldn’t want a snake. Is that the best you can think of?” the wolf asked crossly.

  “I’d rather like to have a baby crocodile. He could swim in my bath. Only I suppose when he grew up I wouldn’t be able to keep him,” Polly said.

  “You certainly wouldn’t. If he was in the bath with you, there wouldn’t be much left of you by the time you got out. I’m thinking of something quite different. Can’t you guess what it is?”

  “A dolphin? They are supposed to be very clever.”

  “Not a dolphin. Why anybody should be interested in keeping a fish, I don’t know. The animal I am thinking of is not a crocodile nor a budgie nor a dolphin. He is large. He has four legs. He has a tail and he is very, very clever. Much cleverer than any other animal you can think of,” the wolf said.

  “Can he talk?”

  “Of course he can talk. You ought to know that.”

  “It’s a parrot,” Polly said, forgetting about the four legs.

  “It is not a parrot. Stupid, they are. All they can say is ‘Clever Polly’. And that means nothing,” the wolf said quickly.

  “A large animal. Very clever, with four legs. With big ears?” Polly asked.

  “Big enough for him to hear everything worth listening to,” the wolf said, his own ears pricking up.

  “A donkey,” Polly said.

  “Grrr. Mind your manners. Donkeys are not clever. They are slow and obstinate. This creature is intelligent . . .”

  “I know! It never forgets anything,” Polly cried.

  “Right!” the wolf said.

  “Has it got a long nose?”

  “Long? It is not one of those snubby, useless little noses that you humans have. It is an elegant and very acute nose.”

  “It’s an elephant,” Polly said, sure that this time she had guessed right.

  “It is not an elephant. Really, I can’t remember when I met anyone with so little brain,” the wolf declared.

  “Not a dolphin. Not a donkey. Not a snake. Not an elephant. Tell me something else about him,” Polly asked.

  “This creature is remarkably sharp,” the wolf said.

  “A hedgehog. Their prickles are very sharp.”

  “Hedgehogs do not have fur.”

  “You didn’t say fur.”

  “Didn’t I? I must have forgotten. The animal I am thinking of has a thick coat of very elegant fur,” the wolf said.

  “What colour?” Polly asked.

  “Black. Black as ebony.”

  “He’s a mole. Moles have black velvet coats and long snouts.”

  The wolf stamped with impatience. “You can’t really be so stupid. Moles are blind, or very nearly blind. They spend their time living underground. I . . . I mean, the animal I am thinking of, lives entirely above ground, in a very distinguished way . . .”

  “Is he gentle?” Polly asked.

  “As a lamb,” the wolf replied, showing his sharp yellow teeth in what he hoped was a pleasing smile.

  “Does he know any tricks?”

  “Tricks?” the wolf repeated, astonished.

  “Does he catch lumps of sugar? Can he balance them on his nose? Does he beg for food?” Polly asked. She was enjoying this conversation.

  “Certainly not. He has no need for such foolish games. Tricks, indeed! He is not a clown. And as for begging, of course not. Why should an upright and self-respecting Wo . . . animal be forced to beg?”

  “Well, what does he do? Why do you think he would make a good pet?” Polly asked.

  “He is well brought up. Most people want their pets to be well brought up. He is large. Can take care of himself. He is faithful. He has been after . . . I mean, he has been following the same person for years. Never looks at anyone else.”

  Polly thought about this.

  “I see. This pet you are recommending is a large somebody, in a black fur coat. He has a long nose and large ears. He doesn’t do any tricks, and he has been faithfully following the same someone for years. Is that right?”

  “About right,” the wolf said.

  “But if he has been after this someone for years and hasn’t ever caught up with her, I don’t see that he can be so very clever.”

  “Ah! But if only she would take him into her house as a pet, she would soon discover just how much cleverer . . . and more lovable, of course, he is than she has ever realized,” the wolf said.

  “It’s no good, Wolf. I don’t want a large black hairy pet, especially not one with long ears and nose and a lot of very sharp teeth. And my mother and father don’t want me to have a big pet who talks. They don’t even like my having a very small white mouse, or a hamster. So, not today, thank you very much,” Polly said, and she walked away towards her home, leaving the wolf outside the pet shop, grinning in at the window and terrifying a harmless guinea-pig, who didn’t at all care for that display of long yellow teeth, even if they were the other side of a plate-glass window.

  6. The Trap

  “WHAT DO you think it’s there for?” Polly said to her sister Jane. They were looking over the gate at an unusual object lying in the lane that ran along the side of their garden.

  “Looks like a packing crate on its side,” Jane said.

  “Why do you suppose its lid is tied back with that piece of string?”

  “Don’t know. Anyhow, it’s very boring. And there’s a horrible smell,” Jane said. She left Polly at the gate and went back into the house.

  “I see you are admiring my tr . . . my latest piece of work,” the wolf said, appearing suddenly on the other side of the crate.

  “I didn’t realize it was yours, Wolf. What is it?” Polly asked.

  “I can’t tell you that, you stupid little girl. If I told you what it was for, it wouldn’t take you by surprise, would it?” the wolf said crossly.

  “Is it a present?” Polly asked. Surprises were sometimes presents, she knew.

  “Certainly not. Why should I give you a present?” the wolf said.

  Polly couldn’t think of a good reason why he should. She asked, “Why is the lid tied back with that bit of string?”

  “Aha! That’s what is so extremely clever. When someone goes into that tr . . . into that box to get the delicious lump of meat which I have placed at the further end, the string is loosened and the lid slams shut, and, hey presto! I have caught my prey.”

  “And then what happens?” Polly asked.

  “I go in and gobble her up. With the delicious piece of meat for afters,” the wolf said. He closed his eyes and licked his lips.

  “Like a mousetrap?” Polly said.

  “That’s right. Like a mousetrap. But I am not trying to catch a mouse. I don’t care much for mice. Too many whiskers and bones to be worth bothering with.”

  “If it isn’t for a mouse, who is it for?” Polly asked, though she had already guessed what sort of animal the wolf meant to
catch in his trap.

  “You ask too many questions. Why do you want to know?”

  “I just wondered whether the animal you want to catch is interested in raw meat,” Polly said.

  “Everyone is interested in raw meat,” the wolf said.

  “I’m not.”

  There was a short, appalled silence.

  “Say that again,” the wolf said, presently.

  “Say what?”

  “You said . . . I thought that you said . . . Perhaps my ears deceived me. I distinctly thought I heard you say that you were not interested in raw meat,” the wolf said.

  “That’s right. I don’t like raw meat,” Polly said.

  “You mean that if you saw a delicious hunk of raw meat at the further end of what looked like a perfectly ordinary tr . . . wooden box, you wouldn’t go in and get it?” the wolf asked. He could hardly believe what he heard.

  “No. I wouldn’t. Especially if it smelled like what you’ve got in there,” Polly said.

  There was a short silence.

  “Ah well! One lives and learns. I must be getting along, now. Nice to have seen you, Polly. No doubt we shall be meeting again,” the wolf said sadly, as he turned away along the lane, dragging the unsuccessful trap behind him.

  “He’ll be back,” Polly thought. She had had experience with the wolf before. She knew how difficult it was for him to give up an idea that had once seemed a good one.

  •

  “Road’s up again,” Polly’s father said, coming in, cross, after a long drive home, to find a large hole in the road just outside his own garage.

  “What is it this time? Gas? Electricity? Drains?” Polly’s mother asked, ladling out hot soup into bowls for the family.

  “Didn’t ask. Wasn’t anyone there. No lights, no signs. Disgrace,” Polly’s father said.

  “I’ll have a look tomorrow. Take care. Soup’s hot,” Polly’s mother said, a little too late. Polly’s father had already burned his tongue.

  The next morning, after breakfast, Polly looked out from her garden and saw the hole in the road. As her father had said, there were no protective barriers and no lamps. There was only one workman, a large person in blue dungarees, hacking away at the road surface with an old-fashioned pickaxe.

  “Why are you digging that hole?” Polly called from the gate.

  The person stopped his digging and looked towards her. He shook his head without speaking and lifted the pickaxe for another stroke.

  “Is it for the electricity? Or the gas? Or the water?” Polly asked.

  “Never you mind what it’s for. Ask no questions and you won’t hear any lies,” the person said, a little out of breath with the effort he had been making.

  Polly considered this. Some people, she thought, told lies without being asked questions.

  “Is it going to be a much larger hole?” she asked presently, as the workman drove smaller holes in the road surrounding the first one.

  “It will be enormous,” the workman said. He jumped on a crumbling edge and said, “Ow!” as he disappeared. The edge had given way under his feet. A moment later the top of his head appeared on a level with the road surface.

  “Did you see that?” he asked, scrambling up out of the hole.

  “I wish you’d tell me what the hole is for,” Polly said.

  “Can’t tell you that,” the workman said, raising his pickaxe for another stroke.

  “Is it a secret?” Polly asked. She loved secrets.

  “It’s a secret,” the workman agreed. He raised his pickaxe again and brought it down with an immense thump into the hole in the road.

  There was a hiss, a rush, a roar. Polly took several steps back into her garden, as a column of water, perhaps ten feet high, shot up from the water-mains pipe which the pickaxe had hit. The workman stood under a shower-bath of falling water, while the road at his feet rapidly turned to a flowing river of mud.

  “Waugh! Whoosh! Atishoo!” the person said, trying to struggle free of the cascade of water. “Why don’t you do something? Hoosh!” he said, angrily, to the dry and interested Polly on the further side of the garden hedge.

  “Engineers! Police! Fire Brigade!” the person spluttered. He reached for his pickaxe and aimed a furious blow at the point where the water was spurting. There was a deafening explosion. Blue flames crackled across the waterfall. The person had managed to hit not only the water mains, but also the electric cable.

  An angry woman appeared on the doorstep of a neighbouring house.

  “My electric has gone out! You’ve cut off my electric!” she said, pointing at the wet and bedraggled workman.

  “I never touched your electric,” the workman said.

  “It’s gone off! And there was my nice chicken, only half cooked,” the woman said.

  “Did you say a half-cooked chicken?” the person said, eagerly. He was drenched, he was singed, but he was also hungry. Water was still gushing up under his feet, but he seemed hardly to notice this.

  “I’ll telephone 999,” Polly said. But when she reached the telephone in her house, she found that it was dead. The person digging a hole in the road had cut through the telephone wires as well as everything else. After this the road was barricaded off for several days while men from the Metropolitan Water Board, from the London Electricity Board and from the Post Office came and mended all the different bits and put the surface of the road back again.

  “That wasn’t very clever, Wolf,” Polly said, looking out of a first-floor window and seeing the wolf sadly gazing at the large knobbly patch in the road where, not so long ago, he had dug his ill-fated hole.

  “How could I know there were all those pipes and wires and things just there?” he grumbled, kicking a loose stone crossly into the gutter.

  “Haven’t you ever seen men digging up the road? Or sometimes it’s the pavement. There are always lots of pipes and wires, all muddled up together.”

  “No one told me,” the wolf said sulkily.

  “Anyway, why were you digging that hole? Were you trying to get down to Australia?” Polly asked.

  “My dear Polly! Don’t you know that Australia is on the other side of the world? Twenty thousand miles away, or something like that?”

  “I just thought perhaps you thought you could get there by digging straight through,” Polly said.

  “Straight through all those tangled-up wires and things? No, thank you. Anyhow, if Australia is twenty thousand miles away, how could it be at the bottom of a hole that I’m digging here?”

  “Because the world is round. Australia is directly underneath us,” Polly said.

  The wolf sighed loudly.

  “I don’t know whether you are really as stupid as you pretend, or if you make these things up to annoy me. Of course the world isn’t round. Anyone can see it’s flat. If it was round,” the wolf went on, thinking hard, “some of the people would be falling off all the time. They’d be upside down. Stop talking nonsense. If you can,” he added grimly.

  “Well, what were you digging that hole for?” Polly asked.

  “That’s a secret.”

  “Is it a secret now, when it isn’t there any longer?” Polly asked.

  “It certainly is. It was part of a very clever plan, which I shall carry out successfully at another time and in another place,” the wolf said.

  “If you want to dig a big hole, why don’t you try something easier than the road? Why don’t you dig in the earth? On the Heath, for instance?” Polly asked.

  The wolf considered this suggestion. Then he asked, “Do you often go for walks on the Heath?”

  “Nearly every day.”

  “Goodbye, Polly. I have just remembered some urgent business. I hope we shall meet again soon,” the wolf said, and Polly saw him hurry away down the road in the direction of the Heath. She had a very good idea of what his urgent business was going to be.

  Sure enough, a few days later, when she was coming home with her sisters from walking across the Heath, she
heard loud puffing sounds, and saw someone working hard on a small patch of grass surrounded by low bushes.

  “Hi!” the someone called as the three girls came near.

  “What do you want?” Polly called back, prudently keeping the bushes between herself and the working person.

  “Come here and see what I’m doing. No. That isn’t what I mean. Come here and see what I’m not doing. No. That’s not right, either. Come here and don’t see what I’m doing,” the wolf said, leaning on his spade.

  “You mean come right up to you and don’t look?”

  “That’s right,” the wolf said, pleased.

  “You want me to walk towards you but to look somewhere else?” Polly said.

  “You could shut your eyes. In fact, that would be the best way to do it,” the wolf said.

  “I don’t think I’m clever enough to walk straight through between the bushes with my eyes shut,” Polly said.

  “How terrible it must be for you to be so very, very stupid,” the wolf said, showing his teeth in a large smile.

  “Could you do it?” Polly asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Perhaps if you showed me how, I would be able to copy you,” Polly suggested.

  “Dead easy,” the wolf said.

  “Show me, then,” Polly said.

  The wolf went to the far side of the patch of grass inside the ring of bushes. He shut his eyes.

  “Like this,” he said.

  “And then what happens?” Polly asked.

  “You just step boldly forward and walk across this fine grassy space. Like so,” the wolf said, and he stepped forward.

  “I think it’s time we went back to tea,” Polly said to her sisters. As they turned towards home, they heard behind them a sudden loud cry.

  “What’s that?” Lucy asked, stopping short.

  “Perhaps someone has fallen down,” said Jane.

  “Into a large hole,” Polly said.

  “Why should anyone dig a very large hole and then fall into it?” Lucy asked.

  “Because,” Polly answered, “he is not a very clever wolf.”

  7. The Wolf Goes Wooing (1)

  “AT LAST I see where I’ve been mistaken,” the wolf said. He was reading one of his favourite books, a collection of stories about clever animals, princes and princesses, wicked witches and terrible dragons. His old mother had given it to him when he was nothing more than a young cub and had told him that everything he needed to know would be found in this excellent book.