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 twice.’

‘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.