'Minus two!' said Charlie.
'Hooray!' said Mr Bucket. 'My mother-in-law's minus two years old!'
'Impossible!' said Mrs Bucket.
'It's true,' said Mr Wonka.
'And where is she now, may I ask?' said Mrs Bucket.
'That's a good question,' said Mr Wonka. 'A very good question. Yes, indeed. Where is she now?'
'You don't have the foggiest idea, do you?'
'Of course I do,' said Mr Wonka. 'I know exactly where she is.'
'Then tell me!'
'You must try to understand,' said Mr Wonka, 'that if she is now minus two, she's got to add two more years before she can start again from nought. She's got to wait it out.'
'Where does she wait?' said Mrs Bucket.
'In the Waiting Room, of course,' said Mr Wonka.
BOOM!-BOOM! said the drums of the Oompa-Loompa band. BOOM-BOOM! BOOM-BOOM! And all the Oompa-Loompas, all the hundreds of them standing there in the Chocolate Room began to sway and hop and dance to the rhythm of the music. 'Attention, please!' they sang.
16
17
18
19
20
'Hooray!' said Mr Bucket. 'My mother-in-law's minus two years old!'
'Impossible!' said Mrs Bucket.
'It's true,' said Mr Wonka.
'And where is she now, may I ask?' said Mrs Bucket.
'That's a good question,' said Mr Wonka. 'A very good question. Yes, indeed. Where is she now?'
'You don't have the foggiest idea, do you?'
'Of course I do,' said Mr Wonka. 'I know exactly where she is.'
'Then tell me!'
'You must try to understand,' said Mr Wonka, 'that if she is now minus two, she's got to add two more years before she can start again from nought. She's got to wait it out.'
'Where does she wait?' said Mrs Bucket.
'In the Waiting Room, of course,' said Mr Wonka.
BOOM!-BOOM! said the drums of the Oompa-Loompa band. BOOM-BOOM! BOOM-BOOM! And all the Oompa-Loompas, all the hundreds of them standing there in the Chocolate Room began to sway and hop and dance to the rhythm of the music. 'Attention, please!' they sang.
'Attention, please! Attention, please!
Don't dare to talk! Don't dare to sneeze!
Don't doze or daydream! Stay awake!
Your health, your very life's at stake!
Ho-ho, you say, they can't mean me.
Ha-ha, we answer, wait and see.
Did any of you ever meet
A child called Goldie Pinklesweet?
Who on her seventh birthday went
To stay with Granny down in Kent.
At lunchtime on the second day
Of dearest little Goldie's stay,
Granny announced, "I'm going down
To do some shopping in the town."
(D'you know why Granny didn't tell
The child to come along as well?
She's going to the nearest inn
To buy herself a double gin.)
So out she creeps. She shuts the door.
And Goldie, after making sure
That she is really by herself,
Goes quickly to the medicine shelf,
And there, her little greedy eyes
See pills of every shape and size,
Such fascinating colours too —
Some green, some pink, some brown, some blue.
"All right," she says, "let's try the brown."
She takes one pill and gulps it down.
"Yum-yum!" she cries. "Hooray! What fun!
They're chocolate-coated, every one!"
She gobbles five, she gobbles ten,
She stops her gobbling only when
The last pill's gone. There are no more.
Slowly she rises from the floor.
She stops. She hiccups. Dear, oh dear,
She starts to feel a trifle queer.
You see, how could young Goldie know,
For nobody had told her so,
That Grandmama, her old relation,
Suffered from frightful constipation.
This meant that every night she'd give
Herself a powerful laxative,
And all the medicines that she'd bought
Were naturally of this sort.
The pink and red and blue and green
Were all extremely strong and mean.
But far more fierce and meaner still,
Was Granny's little chocolate pill.
Its blast effect was quite uncanny.
It used to shake up even Granny.
In point of fact she did not dare
To use them more than twice a year.
So can you wonder little Goldie
Began to feel a wee bit mouldy?
Inside her tummy, something stirred.
A funny gurgling sound was heard,
And then, oh dear, from deep within,
The ghastly rumbling sounds begin!
They rumbilate and roar and boom!
They bounce and echo round the room!
The floorboards shake and from the wall
Some bits of paint and plaster fall. Explosions, whistles, awful bangs
Were followed by the loudest clangs.
(A man next door was heard to say,
"A thunderstorm is on the way.")
But on and on the rumbling goes.
A window cracks, a lamp-bulb blows.
Young Goldie clutched herself and cried,
"There's something wrong with my inside!"
This was, we very greatly fear,
The understatement of the year.
For wouldn't any child feel crummy,
With loud explosions in her tummy?
Granny, at half past two, came in,
Weaving a little from the gin,
But even so she quickly saw
The empty bottle on the floor.
"My precious laxatives!" she cried.
"I don't feel well," the girl replied.
Angrily Grandma shook her head.
"I'm really not surprised," she said.
"Why can't you leave my pills alone?"
With that, she grabbed the telephone
And shouted, "Listen, send us quick
An ambulance! A child is sick!
It's number fifty, Fontwell Road!
Come fast! I think she might explode!"
We're sure you do not wish to hear
About the hospital and where
They did a lot of horrid things
With stomach-pumps and rubber rings.
Let's answer what you want to know:
Did Goldie live or did she go?
The doctors gathered round her bed.
"There's really not much hope," they said.
"She's going, going, gone!" they cried.
"She's had her chips! She's dead! She's dead!"
"I'm not so sure," the child replied.
And all at once she opened wide
Her great big bluish eyes and sighed,
And gave the anxious docs a wink,
And said, "I'll be okay, I think."
So Goldie lived and back she went
At first to Granny's place in Kent.
Her father came the second day
And fetched her in a Chevrolet,
And drove her to their home in Dover.
But Goldie's troubles were not over.
You see, if someone takes enough
Of any highly dangerous stuff,
One will invariably find
Some traces of it left behind.
It pains us greatly to relate
That Goldie suffered from this fate.
She'd taken such a massive fill
Of this unpleasant kind of pill,
It got into her blood and bones,
It messed up all her chromosomes,
It made her constantly upset,
And she could never really get
The beastly stuff to go away.
And so the girl was forced to stay
For seven hours every day
Within the everlasting gloom
Of what we call The Ladies Room.
And after all, the W.C.
Is not the gayest place to be.
So now, before it is too late,
Take heed of Goldie's dreadful fate.
And seriously, all jokes apart,
Do promise us across your heart
That you will never help yourself
To medicine from the medicine shelf
16
Vita-Wonk and Minusland
'It's up to you, Charlie my boy,' said Mr Wonka. 'It's your factory. Shall we let your Grandma Georgina wait it out for the next two years or shall we try to bring her back right now?'
'You don't really mean you might be able to bring her back?' cried Charlie.
'There's no harm in trying, is there … if that's the way you want it?'
'Oh yes! Of course I do! For Mother's sake especially! Can't you see how sad she is!'
Mrs Bucket was sitting on the edge of the big bed, dabbing her eyes with a hanky. 'My poor old mum,' she kept saying. 'She's minus two and I won't see her again for months and months and months — if ever at all!' Behind her, Grandpa Joe, with the help of an Oompa-Loompa, was feeding his three-month-old wife, Grandma Josephine, from a bottle. Alongside them, Mr Bucket was spooning something called 'Wonka's Squdgemallow Baby Food' into one-year-old Grandpa George's mouth but mostly all over his chin and chest. 'Big deal!' he was muttering angrily. 'What a lousy rotten rotten this is! They tell me I'm going to the Chocolate Factory to have a good time and I finish up being a mother to my father-in-law.'
'Everything's under control, Charlie,' said Mr Wonka, surveying the scene. 'They're doing fine. They don't need us here. Come along! We're off to hunt for Grandma!' He caught Charlie by the arm and went dancing towards the open door of the Great Glass Elevator. 'Hurry up, my dear boy, hurry up!' he cried. 'We've got to hustle if we're going to get there before!'
'Before what, Mr Wonka?'
'Before she gets subtracted of course! All Minuses are subtracted! Don't you know any arithmetic at all?'
They were in the Elevator now and Mr Wonka was searching among the hundreds of buttons for the one he wanted.
'Here we are!' he said, placing his finger delicately upon a tiny ivory button on which it said 'MINUSLAND'.
The doors slid shut. And then, with a fearful whistling whirring sound the great machine leaped away to the right. Charlie grabbed Mr Wonka's legs and held on for dear life. Mr Wonka pulled a jump-seat out of the wall and said, 'Sit down Charlie, quick, and strap yourself in tight! This journey's going to be rough and choppy!' There were straps on either side of the seat and Charlie buckled himself firmly in. Mr Wonka pulled out a second seat for himself and did the same.
'We are going a long way down,' he said. 'Oh, such a long way down we are going.'
The Elevator was gathering speed. It twisted and swerved. It swung sharply to the left, then it went right, then left again, and it was heading downward all the time — down and down and down. 'I only hope,' said Mr Wonka, 'the Oompa-Loompas aren't using the other Elevator today.'
'What other Elevator?' asked Charlie.
'The one that goes the opposite way on the same track as this.'
'Holy snakes, Mr Wonka! You mean we might have a collision?'
'I've always been lucky so far, my boy … Hey! Take a look out there! Quick!'
Through the window, Charlie caught a glimpse of what seemed like an enormous quarry with a steep craggy-brown rock-face, and all over the rock-face there were hundreds of Oompa-Loompas working with picks and pneumatic drills.
'Rock-candy,' said Mr Wonka. 'That's the richest deposit of rock-candy in the world.'
The Elevator sped on. 'We're going deeper, Charlie. Deeper and deeper. We're about two hundred thousand feet down already.' Strange sights were flashing by outside, but the Elevator was travelling at such a terrific speed that only occasionally was Charlie able to recognize anything at all. Once, he thought he saw in the distance a cluster of tiny houses shaped like upside-down cups, and there were streets in between the houses and Oompa-Loompas walking in the streets. Another time, as they were passing some sort of a vast red plain dotted with things that looked like oil derricks, he saw a great spout of brown liquid spurting out of the ground high into the air. 'A gusher!' cried Mr Wonka, clapping his hands. 'A whacking great gusher! How splendid! Just when we needed it!'
'A what?' said Charlie.
'We've struck chocolate again, my boy. That'll be a rich new field. Oh, what a beautiful gusher! Just look at it go!'
On they roared, heading downward more steeply than ever now, and hundreds, literally hundreds of astonishing sights kept flashing by outside. There were giant cog-wheels turning and mixers mixing and bubbles bubbling and vast orchards of toffee-apple trees and lakes the size of football grounds filled with blue and gold and green liquid, and everywhere there were Oompa-Loompas!
'You realize,' said Mr Wonka, 'that what you saw earlier on when you went round the factory with all those naughty little children was only a tiny corner of the establishment. It goes down for miles and miles. And as soon as possible I shall show you all the way around slowly and properly. But that will take three weeks. Right now we have other things to think about and I have important things to tell you. Listen carefully to me, Charlie. I must talk fast, for we'll be there in a couple of minutes.
'I suppose you guessed,' Mr Wonka went on, 'what happened to all those Oompa-Loompas in the Testing Room when I was experimenting with Wonka-Vite. Of course you did. They disappeared and became Minuses just like your Grandma Georgina. The recipe was miles too strong. One of them actually became Minus eighty-seven! Imagine that!'
'You mean he's got to wait eighty-seven years before he can come back?' Charlie asked.
'That's what kept bugging me, my boy. After all, one can't allow one's best friends to wait around as miserable Minuses for eighty-seven years …'
'And get subtracted as well,' said Charlie. 'That would be frightful.'
'Of course it would, Charlie. So what did I do? "Willy Wonka," I said to myself, "if you can invent Wonka-Vite to make people younger, then surely to goodness you can also invent something else to make people older!"'
'Ah-ha!' cried Charlie. 'I see what you're getting at. Then you could turn the Minuses quickly back into Pluses and bring them home again.'
'Precisely, my dear boy, precisely — always supposing, of course, that I could find out where the Minuses had gone to!'
The Elevator plunged on, diving steeply toward the centre of the Earth. All was blackness outside now. There was nothing to be seen.
'So once again,' Mr Wonka went on, 'I rolled up my sleeves and set to work. Once again I squeezed my brain, searching for the new recipe … I had to create age … to make people old … old, older, oldest … "Ha-ha!" I cried, for now the ideas were beginning to come. "What is the oldest living thing in the world? What lives longer than anything else?"'
'A tree,' Charlie said.
'Right you are, Charlie! But what kind of a tree? Not the Douglas Fir. Not the Oak. Not the Cedar. No no, my boy. It is a tree called the Bristlecone Pine that grows upon the slopes of Wheeler Peak in Nevada, U.S.A. You can find Bristlecone Pines on Wheeler Peak today that are over four thousand years old! This is fact, Charlie. Ask any dendrochronologist you like (and look that word up in the dictionary when you get home, will you, please?). So that started me off. I jumped into the Great Glass Elevator and rushed all over the world collecting special items from the oldest living things …
A PINT OF SAP FROM A 4000-YEAR-OLD BRISTLECONE PINE
THE TOE-NAIL CLIPPINGS FROM A 168-YEAR-OLD RUSSIAN FARMER
CALLED PETROVITCH GREGOROVITCH
AN EGG LAID BY A 200-YEAR-OLD TORTOISE BELONGING TO THE KING OF
TONGA
THE TAIL OF A 51-YEAR-OLD HORSE IN ARABIA
THE WHISKERS OF A 36-YEAR-OLD CAT CALLED CRUMPETS
AN OLD FLEA WHICH HAD LIVED ON CRUMPETS FOR 36 YEARS
THE TAIL OF A 207-YEAR-OLD GIANT RAT FROM TIBET
THE BLACK TEETH OF A 97-YEAR OLD GRIMALKIN LIVING IN A CAVE ON
MOUNT POPOCATEPETL
THE KNUCKLEBONES OF A 700-YEAR-OLD CATTALOO FROM PERU …
… All over the world, Charlie, I tracked down very old and ancient animals and took an important little bit of something from each one of them — a hair or an eyebrow or sometimes it was no more than an ounce or two of the jam scraped from between its toes while it was sleeping. I tracked down THE WHISTLE-PIG, THE BOBOLINK, THE SKROCK, THE POLLY-FROG, THE GIANT CURLICUE, THE STINGING SLUG AND THE VENOMOUS SQUERKLE who can spit poison right into your eye from fifty yards away. But there's no time to tell you about them all now, Charlie. Let me just say quickly that in the end, after lots of boiling and bubbling and mixing and testing in my Inventing Room, I produced one tiny cupful of oily black liquid and gave four drops of it to a brave twenty-year-old Oompa-Loompa volunteer to see what happened.'
'What did happen?' Charlie asked.
'It was fantastic!' cried Mr Wonka. 'The moment he swallowed it, he began wrinkling and shrivelling up all over and his hair started dropping off and his teeth started falling out and, before I knew it, he had suddenly become an old fellow of seventy-five! And thus, my dear Charlie, was Vita-Wonk invented!'
'Did you rescue all the Oompa-Loompa Minuses, Mr Wonka?'
'Every single one of them, my boy! One hundred and thirty-one all told! Mind you, it wasn't quite as easy as all that. There were lots of snags and complications along the way… . Good heavens! We're nearly there! I must stop talking now and watch where we're going.'
Charlie realized that the Elevator was no longer rushing and roaring. It was hardly moving at all now. It seemed to be drifting. 'Undo your straps,' Mr Wonka said. 'We must get ready for action.' Charlie undid his straps and stood up and peered out. It was an eerie sight. They were drifting in a heavy grey mist and the mist was swirling and swishing around them as though driven by winds from many sides. In the distance, the mist was darker and almost black and it seemed to be swirling more fiercely than ever over there. Mr Wonka slid open the doors. 'Stand back!' he said. 'Don't fall out, Charlie, whatever you do!'
The mist came into the Elevator. It had the fusty reeky smell of an old underground dungeon. The silence was overpowering. There was no sound at all, no whisper of wind, no voice of creature or insect, and it gave Charlie a queer frightening feeling to be standing there in the middle of this grey inhuman nothingness — as though he were in another world altogether, in some place where man should never be.
'Minusland!' whispered Mr Wonka. 'This is it, Charlie! The problem now is to find her. We may be lucky … and there again, we may not!'
'You don't really mean you might be able to bring her back?' cried Charlie.
'There's no harm in trying, is there … if that's the way you want it?'
'Oh yes! Of course I do! For Mother's sake especially! Can't you see how sad she is!'
Mrs Bucket was sitting on the edge of the big bed, dabbing her eyes with a hanky. 'My poor old mum,' she kept saying. 'She's minus two and I won't see her again for months and months and months — if ever at all!' Behind her, Grandpa Joe, with the help of an Oompa-Loompa, was feeding his three-month-old wife, Grandma Josephine, from a bottle. Alongside them, Mr Bucket was spooning something called 'Wonka's Squdgemallow Baby Food' into one-year-old Grandpa George's mouth but mostly all over his chin and chest. 'Big deal!' he was muttering angrily. 'What a lousy rotten rotten this is! They tell me I'm going to the Chocolate Factory to have a good time and I finish up being a mother to my father-in-law.'
'Everything's under control, Charlie,' said Mr Wonka, surveying the scene. 'They're doing fine. They don't need us here. Come along! We're off to hunt for Grandma!' He caught Charlie by the arm and went dancing towards the open door of the Great Glass Elevator. 'Hurry up, my dear boy, hurry up!' he cried. 'We've got to hustle if we're going to get there before!'
'Before what, Mr Wonka?'
'Before she gets subtracted of course! All Minuses are subtracted! Don't you know any arithmetic at all?'
They were in the Elevator now and Mr Wonka was searching among the hundreds of buttons for the one he wanted.
'Here we are!' he said, placing his finger delicately upon a tiny ivory button on which it said 'MINUSLAND'.
The doors slid shut. And then, with a fearful whistling whirring sound the great machine leaped away to the right. Charlie grabbed Mr Wonka's legs and held on for dear life. Mr Wonka pulled a jump-seat out of the wall and said, 'Sit down Charlie, quick, and strap yourself in tight! This journey's going to be rough and choppy!' There were straps on either side of the seat and Charlie buckled himself firmly in. Mr Wonka pulled out a second seat for himself and did the same.
'We are going a long way down,' he said. 'Oh, such a long way down we are going.'
The Elevator was gathering speed. It twisted and swerved. It swung sharply to the left, then it went right, then left again, and it was heading downward all the time — down and down and down. 'I only hope,' said Mr Wonka, 'the Oompa-Loompas aren't using the other Elevator today.'
'What other Elevator?' asked Charlie.
'The one that goes the opposite way on the same track as this.'
'Holy snakes, Mr Wonka! You mean we might have a collision?'
'I've always been lucky so far, my boy … Hey! Take a look out there! Quick!'
Through the window, Charlie caught a glimpse of what seemed like an enormous quarry with a steep craggy-brown rock-face, and all over the rock-face there were hundreds of Oompa-Loompas working with picks and pneumatic drills.
'Rock-candy,' said Mr Wonka. 'That's the richest deposit of rock-candy in the world.'
The Elevator sped on. 'We're going deeper, Charlie. Deeper and deeper. We're about two hundred thousand feet down already.' Strange sights were flashing by outside, but the Elevator was travelling at such a terrific speed that only occasionally was Charlie able to recognize anything at all. Once, he thought he saw in the distance a cluster of tiny houses shaped like upside-down cups, and there were streets in between the houses and Oompa-Loompas walking in the streets. Another time, as they were passing some sort of a vast red plain dotted with things that looked like oil derricks, he saw a great spout of brown liquid spurting out of the ground high into the air. 'A gusher!' cried Mr Wonka, clapping his hands. 'A whacking great gusher! How splendid! Just when we needed it!'
'A what?' said Charlie.
'We've struck chocolate again, my boy. That'll be a rich new field. Oh, what a beautiful gusher! Just look at it go!'
On they roared, heading downward more steeply than ever now, and hundreds, literally hundreds of astonishing sights kept flashing by outside. There were giant cog-wheels turning and mixers mixing and bubbles bubbling and vast orchards of toffee-apple trees and lakes the size of football grounds filled with blue and gold and green liquid, and everywhere there were Oompa-Loompas!
'You realize,' said Mr Wonka, 'that what you saw earlier on when you went round the factory with all those naughty little children was only a tiny corner of the establishment. It goes down for miles and miles. And as soon as possible I shall show you all the way around slowly and properly. But that will take three weeks. Right now we have other things to think about and I have important things to tell you. Listen carefully to me, Charlie. I must talk fast, for we'll be there in a couple of minutes.
'I suppose you guessed,' Mr Wonka went on, 'what happened to all those Oompa-Loompas in the Testing Room when I was experimenting with Wonka-Vite. Of course you did. They disappeared and became Minuses just like your Grandma Georgina. The recipe was miles too strong. One of them actually became Minus eighty-seven! Imagine that!'
'You mean he's got to wait eighty-seven years before he can come back?' Charlie asked.
'That's what kept bugging me, my boy. After all, one can't allow one's best friends to wait around as miserable Minuses for eighty-seven years …'
'And get subtracted as well,' said Charlie. 'That would be frightful.'
'Of course it would, Charlie. So what did I do? "Willy Wonka," I said to myself, "if you can invent Wonka-Vite to make people younger, then surely to goodness you can also invent something else to make people older!"'
'Ah-ha!' cried Charlie. 'I see what you're getting at. Then you could turn the Minuses quickly back into Pluses and bring them home again.'
'Precisely, my dear boy, precisely — always supposing, of course, that I could find out where the Minuses had gone to!'
The Elevator plunged on, diving steeply toward the centre of the Earth. All was blackness outside now. There was nothing to be seen.
'So once again,' Mr Wonka went on, 'I rolled up my sleeves and set to work. Once again I squeezed my brain, searching for the new recipe … I had to create age … to make people old … old, older, oldest … "Ha-ha!" I cried, for now the ideas were beginning to come. "What is the oldest living thing in the world? What lives longer than anything else?"'
'A tree,' Charlie said.
'Right you are, Charlie! But what kind of a tree? Not the Douglas Fir. Not the Oak. Not the Cedar. No no, my boy. It is a tree called the Bristlecone Pine that grows upon the slopes of Wheeler Peak in Nevada, U.S.A. You can find Bristlecone Pines on Wheeler Peak today that are over four thousand years old! This is fact, Charlie. Ask any dendrochronologist you like (and look that word up in the dictionary when you get home, will you, please?). So that started me off. I jumped into the Great Glass Elevator and rushed all over the world collecting special items from the oldest living things …
A PINT OF SAP FROM A 4000-YEAR-OLD BRISTLECONE PINE
THE TOE-NAIL CLIPPINGS FROM A 168-YEAR-OLD RUSSIAN FARMER
CALLED PETROVITCH GREGOROVITCH
AN EGG LAID BY A 200-YEAR-OLD TORTOISE BELONGING TO THE KING OF
TONGA
THE TAIL OF A 51-YEAR-OLD HORSE IN ARABIA
THE WHISKERS OF A 36-YEAR-OLD CAT CALLED CRUMPETS
AN OLD FLEA WHICH HAD LIVED ON CRUMPETS FOR 36 YEARS
THE TAIL OF A 207-YEAR-OLD GIANT RAT FROM TIBET
THE BLACK TEETH OF A 97-YEAR OLD GRIMALKIN LIVING IN A CAVE ON
MOUNT POPOCATEPETL
THE KNUCKLEBONES OF A 700-YEAR-OLD CATTALOO FROM PERU …
… All over the world, Charlie, I tracked down very old and ancient animals and took an important little bit of something from each one of them — a hair or an eyebrow or sometimes it was no more than an ounce or two of the jam scraped from between its toes while it was sleeping. I tracked down THE WHISTLE-PIG, THE BOBOLINK, THE SKROCK, THE POLLY-FROG, THE GIANT CURLICUE, THE STINGING SLUG AND THE VENOMOUS SQUERKLE who can spit poison right into your eye from fifty yards away. But there's no time to tell you about them all now, Charlie. Let me just say quickly that in the end, after lots of boiling and bubbling and mixing and testing in my Inventing Room, I produced one tiny cupful of oily black liquid and gave four drops of it to a brave twenty-year-old Oompa-Loompa volunteer to see what happened.'
'What did happen?' Charlie asked.
'It was fantastic!' cried Mr Wonka. 'The moment he swallowed it, he began wrinkling and shrivelling up all over and his hair started dropping off and his teeth started falling out and, before I knew it, he had suddenly become an old fellow of seventy-five! And thus, my dear Charlie, was Vita-Wonk invented!'
'Did you rescue all the Oompa-Loompa Minuses, Mr Wonka?'
'Every single one of them, my boy! One hundred and thirty-one all told! Mind you, it wasn't quite as easy as all that. There were lots of snags and complications along the way… . Good heavens! We're nearly there! I must stop talking now and watch where we're going.'
Charlie realized that the Elevator was no longer rushing and roaring. It was hardly moving at all now. It seemed to be drifting. 'Undo your straps,' Mr Wonka said. 'We must get ready for action.' Charlie undid his straps and stood up and peered out. It was an eerie sight. They were drifting in a heavy grey mist and the mist was swirling and swishing around them as though driven by winds from many sides. In the distance, the mist was darker and almost black and it seemed to be swirling more fiercely than ever over there. Mr Wonka slid open the doors. 'Stand back!' he said. 'Don't fall out, Charlie, whatever you do!'
The mist came into the Elevator. It had the fusty reeky smell of an old underground dungeon. The silence was overpowering. There was no sound at all, no whisper of wind, no voice of creature or insect, and it gave Charlie a queer frightening feeling to be standing there in the middle of this grey inhuman nothingness — as though he were in another world altogether, in some place where man should never be.
'Minusland!' whispered Mr Wonka. 'This is it, Charlie! The problem now is to find her. We may be lucky … and there again, we may not!'
17
Rescue in Minusland
T don't like it here at all,' Charlie whispered. 'It gives me the willies.'
'Me, too,' Mr Wonka whispered back. 'But we've got a job to do, Charlie, and we must go through with it.'
The mist was condensing now on the glass walls of the Elevator making it difficult to see out except through the open doors.
'Do any other creatures live here, Mr Wonka?'
'Plenty of Gnoolies.'
'Are they dangerous?'
'If they bite you, they are. You're a gonner, my boy, if you're bitten by a Gnooly.'
The Elevator drifted on, rocking gently from side to side. The grey-black oily fog swirled around them.
'What does a Gnooly look like, Mr Wonka?' 'They don't look like anything, Charlie. They can't.' 'You mean you've never seen one?'
'You can't see Gnoolies, my boy. You can't even feel them … until they puncture your skin … then it's too late. They've got you.'
'You mean … there might be swarms of them all around us this very moment?' Charlie asked.
'There might,' said Mr Wonka.
Charlie felt his skin beginning to creep. 'Do you die at once?' he asked.
'First you become subtracted … a little later you are divided … but very slowly … it takes a long time … it's long division and it's very painful. After that, you become one of them.'
'Couldn't we shut the door?' Charlie asked.
'I'm afraid not, my boy. We'd never see her through the glass. There's too much mist and moisture. She's not going to be easy to pick out anyway.'
Charlie stood at the open door of the Elevator and stared into the swirling vapours. This, he thought, is what hell must be like … hell without heat … there was something unholy about it all, something unbelievably diabolical … It was all so deathly quiet, so desolate and empty … At the same time, the constant movement, the twisting and swirling of the misty vapours, gave one the feeling that some very powerful force, evil and malignant, was at work all around … Charlie felt a jab on his arm! He jumped! He almost jumped out of the Elevator! 'Sorry,' said Mr Wonka. 'It's only me.'
'Oh-h-h!' Charlie gasped. 'For a second, I thought …'
'I know what you thought, Charlie … And by the way, I'm awfully glad you're with me. How would you like to come here alone … as I did … as I had to … many times?'
'I wouldn't,' said Charlie.
'There she is!' said Mr Wonka, pointing. 'No, she isn't! … Oh, dear! I could have sworn I saw her for a moment right over there on the edge of that dark patch. Keep watching, Charlie.'
'There!' said Charlie. 'Over there. Look!'
'Where?' said Mr Wonka. 'Point to her, Charlie!'
'She's … she's gone again. She sort of faded away,' Charlie said.
They stood at the open door of the Elevator, peering into the swirly grey vapours.
'There! Quick! Right there!' Charlie cried. 'Can't you see her?'
'Yes, Charlie! I see her! I'm moving up close now!'
Mr Wonka reached behind him and began touching a number of buttons.
'Grandma!' Charlie cried out. 'We've come to get you, Grandma!'
They could see her faintly through the mist, but oh so faintly. And they could see the mist through her as well. She was transparent. She was hardly there at all. She was no more than a shadow. They could see her face and just the faintest outline of her body swathed in a sort of gown. But she wasn't upright. She was floating lengthwise in the swirling vapour.
'Why is she lying down?' Charlie whispered.
'Because she's a Minus, Charlie. Surely you know what a minus looks like … Like that …' Mr Wonka drew a horizontal line in the air with his finger.
The Elevator glided close. The ghostly shadow of Grandma Georgina's face was no more than a yard away now. Charlie reached out through the door to touch her but there was nothing there to touch. His hand went right through her skin. 'Grandma!' he gasped. She began to drift away.
'Stand back!' ordered Mr Wonka, and suddenly, from some secret place inside his coat-tails he whisked out a spray-gun. It was one of those old-fashioned things people used to use for spraying fly-spray around the room before aerosols came along. He aimed the spray-gun straight at the shadow of Grandma Georgina and he pumped the handle hard ONCE … TWICE … THREE TIMES! Each time, a fine black spray spurted out from the nozzle of the gun. Instantly, Grandma Georgina disappeared.
'A bull's eye!' cried Mr Wonka, jumping up and down with excitement. 'I got her with both barrels! I plussed her good and proper! That's Vita-Wonk for you!'
'Where's she gone?' Charlie asked.
'Back where she came from, of course! To the factory! She's a Minus no longer, my boy! She's a one hundred per cent red-blooded Plus! Come along now! Let's get out of here quickly before the Gnoolies find us!' Mr Wonka jabbed a button. The doors closed and the Great Glass Elevator shot upwards for home.
'Sit down and strap yourself in again, Charlie!' said Mr Wonka. 'We're going flat out this time!'
The Elevator roared and rocketed up toward the surface of the Earth. Mr Wonka and Charlie sat side by side on their little jump-seats, strapped in tight. Mr Wonka started tucking the spray-gun back into that enormous pocket somewhere in his coat-tails. 'It's such a pity one has to use a clumsy old thing like this,' he said. 'But there's simply no other way of doing it. Ideally, of course, one would measure out exactly the right number of drops into a teaspoon and feed it carefully into the mouth. But it's impossible to feed anything into a Minus. It's like trying to feed one's own shadow. That's why I've got to use a spray-gun. Spray 'em all over, my boy! That's the only way!'
'It worked fine, though, didn't it?' Charlie said.
'Oh, it worked all right, Charlie! It worked beautifully! All I'm saying is that there's bound to be a slight overdose …'
'I don't quite know what you mean, Mr Wonka.'
'My dear boy, if it only takes four drops of Vita-Wonk to turn a young Oompa-Loompa into an old man …' Mr Wonka lifted his hands and let them fall limply on to his lap.
'You mean Grandma may have got too much?' asked Charlie, turning slightly pale. 'I'm afraid that's putting it rather mildly,' said Mr Wonka.
'But … but why did you give her such a lot of it, then?' said Charlie, getting more and more worried. 'Why did you spray her three times? She must have got pints and pints of it!'
'Gallons!' cried Mr Wonka, slapping his thighs. 'Gallons and gallons! But don't let a little thing like that bother you, my dear Charlie! The important part of it is we've got her back! She's a Minus no longer! She's a lovely Plus!
'Me, too,' Mr Wonka whispered back. 'But we've got a job to do, Charlie, and we must go through with it.'
The mist was condensing now on the glass walls of the Elevator making it difficult to see out except through the open doors.
'Do any other creatures live here, Mr Wonka?'
'Plenty of Gnoolies.'
'Are they dangerous?'
'If they bite you, they are. You're a gonner, my boy, if you're bitten by a Gnooly.'
The Elevator drifted on, rocking gently from side to side. The grey-black oily fog swirled around them.
'What does a Gnooly look like, Mr Wonka?' 'They don't look like anything, Charlie. They can't.' 'You mean you've never seen one?'
'You can't see Gnoolies, my boy. You can't even feel them … until they puncture your skin … then it's too late. They've got you.'
'You mean … there might be swarms of them all around us this very moment?' Charlie asked.
'There might,' said Mr Wonka.
Charlie felt his skin beginning to creep. 'Do you die at once?' he asked.
'First you become subtracted … a little later you are divided … but very slowly … it takes a long time … it's long division and it's very painful. After that, you become one of them.'
'Couldn't we shut the door?' Charlie asked.
'I'm afraid not, my boy. We'd never see her through the glass. There's too much mist and moisture. She's not going to be easy to pick out anyway.'
Charlie stood at the open door of the Elevator and stared into the swirling vapours. This, he thought, is what hell must be like … hell without heat … there was something unholy about it all, something unbelievably diabolical … It was all so deathly quiet, so desolate and empty … At the same time, the constant movement, the twisting and swirling of the misty vapours, gave one the feeling that some very powerful force, evil and malignant, was at work all around … Charlie felt a jab on his arm! He jumped! He almost jumped out of the Elevator! 'Sorry,' said Mr Wonka. 'It's only me.'
'Oh-h-h!' Charlie gasped. 'For a second, I thought …'
'I know what you thought, Charlie … And by the way, I'm awfully glad you're with me. How would you like to come here alone … as I did … as I had to … many times?'
'I wouldn't,' said Charlie.
'There she is!' said Mr Wonka, pointing. 'No, she isn't! … Oh, dear! I could have sworn I saw her for a moment right over there on the edge of that dark patch. Keep watching, Charlie.'
'There!' said Charlie. 'Over there. Look!'
'Where?' said Mr Wonka. 'Point to her, Charlie!'
'She's … she's gone again. She sort of faded away,' Charlie said.
They stood at the open door of the Elevator, peering into the swirly grey vapours.
'There! Quick! Right there!' Charlie cried. 'Can't you see her?'
'Yes, Charlie! I see her! I'm moving up close now!'
Mr Wonka reached behind him and began touching a number of buttons.
'Grandma!' Charlie cried out. 'We've come to get you, Grandma!'
They could see her faintly through the mist, but oh so faintly. And they could see the mist through her as well. She was transparent. She was hardly there at all. She was no more than a shadow. They could see her face and just the faintest outline of her body swathed in a sort of gown. But she wasn't upright. She was floating lengthwise in the swirling vapour.
'Why is she lying down?' Charlie whispered.
'Because she's a Minus, Charlie. Surely you know what a minus looks like … Like that …' Mr Wonka drew a horizontal line in the air with his finger.
The Elevator glided close. The ghostly shadow of Grandma Georgina's face was no more than a yard away now. Charlie reached out through the door to touch her but there was nothing there to touch. His hand went right through her skin. 'Grandma!' he gasped. She began to drift away.
'Stand back!' ordered Mr Wonka, and suddenly, from some secret place inside his coat-tails he whisked out a spray-gun. It was one of those old-fashioned things people used to use for spraying fly-spray around the room before aerosols came along. He aimed the spray-gun straight at the shadow of Grandma Georgina and he pumped the handle hard ONCE … TWICE … THREE TIMES! Each time, a fine black spray spurted out from the nozzle of the gun. Instantly, Grandma Georgina disappeared.
'A bull's eye!' cried Mr Wonka, jumping up and down with excitement. 'I got her with both barrels! I plussed her good and proper! That's Vita-Wonk for you!'
'Where's she gone?' Charlie asked.
'Back where she came from, of course! To the factory! She's a Minus no longer, my boy! She's a one hundred per cent red-blooded Plus! Come along now! Let's get out of here quickly before the Gnoolies find us!' Mr Wonka jabbed a button. The doors closed and the Great Glass Elevator shot upwards for home.
'Sit down and strap yourself in again, Charlie!' said Mr Wonka. 'We're going flat out this time!'
The Elevator roared and rocketed up toward the surface of the Earth. Mr Wonka and Charlie sat side by side on their little jump-seats, strapped in tight. Mr Wonka started tucking the spray-gun back into that enormous pocket somewhere in his coat-tails. 'It's such a pity one has to use a clumsy old thing like this,' he said. 'But there's simply no other way of doing it. Ideally, of course, one would measure out exactly the right number of drops into a teaspoon and feed it carefully into the mouth. But it's impossible to feed anything into a Minus. It's like trying to feed one's own shadow. That's why I've got to use a spray-gun. Spray 'em all over, my boy! That's the only way!'
'It worked fine, though, didn't it?' Charlie said.
'Oh, it worked all right, Charlie! It worked beautifully! All I'm saying is that there's bound to be a slight overdose …'
'I don't quite know what you mean, Mr Wonka.'
'My dear boy, if it only takes four drops of Vita-Wonk to turn a young Oompa-Loompa into an old man …' Mr Wonka lifted his hands and let them fall limply on to his lap.
'You mean Grandma may have got too much?' asked Charlie, turning slightly pale. 'I'm afraid that's putting it rather mildly,' said Mr Wonka.
'But … but why did you give her such a lot of it, then?' said Charlie, getting more and more worried. 'Why did you spray her three times? She must have got pints and pints of it!'
'Gallons!' cried Mr Wonka, slapping his thighs. 'Gallons and gallons! But don't let a little thing like that bother you, my dear Charlie! The important part of it is we've got her back! She's a Minus no longer! She's a lovely Plus!
'She's as plussy as plussy can be!
She's more plussy than you or than me!
The question is how,
Just how old is she now?
Is she more than a hundred and three?'
18
The Oldest Person in the World
'We return in triumph, Charlie!' cried Mr Wonka as the Great Glass Elevator began to slow down. 'Once more your dear family will all be together again!'
The Elevator stopped. The doors slid open. And there was the Chocolate Room and the chocolate river and the Oompa-Loompas and in the middle of it all the great bed belonging to the old grandparents. 'Charlie!' said Grandpa Joe, rushing forward. 'Thank heavens you're back!' Charlie hugged him. Then he hugged his mother and his father. 'Is she here?' he said. 'Grandma Georgina?'
Nobody answered. Nobody did anything except Grandpa Joe, who pointed to the bed. He pointed but he didn't look where he was pointing. None of them looked at the bed — except Charlie. He walked past them all to get a better view, and he saw at one end the two babies, Grandma Josephine and Grandpa George, both tucked in and sleeping peacefully. At the other end …
'Don't be alarmed,' said Mr Wonka, running up and placing a hand on Charlie's arm. 'She's bound to be just a teeny bit over-plussed. I warned you about that.'
'What have you done to her?' cried Mrs Bucket. 'My poor old mother!'
Propped up against the pillows at the other end of the bed was the most extraordinary-looking thing Charlie had ever seen! Was it some ancient fossil? It couldn't be that because it was moving slightly! And now it was making sounds! Croaking sounds — the kind of sounds a very old frog might make if it knew a few words. 'Well, well, well,' it croaked. 'If it isn't dear Charlie.'
'Grandma!' cried Charlie. 'Grandma Georgina! Oh … Oh … Oh!'
Her tiny face was like a pickled walnut. There were such masses of creases and wrinkles that the mouth and eyes and even the nose were sunken almost out of sight. Her hair was pure white and her hands, which were resting on top of the blanket, were just little lumps of wrinkly skin.
The presence of this ancient creature seemed to have terrified not only Mr and Mrs Bucket, but Grandpa Joe as well. They stood well back, away from the bed. Mr Wonka, on the other hand, was as happy as ever. 'My dear lady!' he cried, advancing to the edge of the bed and clasping one of those tiny wrinkled hands in both of his. 'Welcome home! And how are you feeling on this bright and glorious day?'
'Not too bad,' croaked Grandma Georgina. 'Not too bad at all … considering my age.'
'Good for you!' said Mr Wonka. 'Atta girl! All we've got to do now is find out exactly how old you are! Then we shall be able to take further action!'
'You're taking no further action around here,' said Mrs Bucket, tight-lipped. 'You've done enough damage already!'
'But my dear old muddleheaded mugwump,' said Mr Wonka, turning to Mrs Bucket. 'What does it matter that the old girl has become a trifle too old? We can put that right in a jiffy! Have you forgotten Wonka-Vite and how every tablet makes you twenty years younger? We shall bring her back! We shall transform her into a blossoming blushing maiden in the twink of an eye!'
'What good is that when her husband's not even out of his nappies yet?' wailed Mrs Bucket, pointing a finger at the one-year-old Grandpa George, so peacefully sleeping.
'Madam,' said Mr Wonka, 'let us do one thing at a time …'
'I forbid you to give her that beastly Wonka-Vite!' said Mrs Bucket. 'You'll turn her into a Minus again just as sure as I'm standing here!'
'I don't want to be a Minus!' croaked Grandma Georgina. 'If I ever have to go back to that beastly Minusland again, the Gnoolies will knickle me!'
'Fear not!' said Mr Wonka. 'This time I myself will supervise the giving of the medicine. I shall personally see to it that you get the correct dosage. But listen very carefully now! I cannot work out how many pills to give you until I know exactly how old you are! That's obvious, isn't it?'
'It is not obvious at all,' said Mrs Bucket. 'Why can't you give her one pill at a time and play it safe?'
'Impossible, madam. In very serious cases such as this one, Wonka-Vite doesn't work at all when given in small doses. You've got to throw everything at her in one go. You've got to hit her with it hard. A single pill wouldn't even begin to shift her. She's too far gone for that. It's all or nothing.'
'No,' said Mrs Bucket firmly.
'Yes,' said Mr Wonka. 'Dear lady, please listen to me. If you have a very severe headache and you need three aspirins to cure it, it's no good taking only one at a time and waiting four hours between each. You'll never cure yourself that way. You've got to gulp them all down in one go. It's the same with Wonka-Vite. May I proceed?'
'Oh, all right, I suppose you'll have to,' said Mrs Bucket.
'Good,' said Mr Wonka, giving a little jump and twirling his feet in the air. 'Now then, how old are you, my dear Grandma Georgina?'
'I don't know,' she croaked. 'I lost count of that years and years ago.'
'Don't you have any idea?' said Mr Wonka.
'Of course I don't,' gibbered the old woman. 'Nor would you if you were as old as I am.'
'Think!' said Mr Wonka. 'You've got to think!'
The tiny old wrinkled brown walnut face wrinkled itself up more than ever. The others stood waiting. The Oompa-Loompas, enthralled by the sight of this ancient object, were all edging closer and closer to the bed. The two babies slept on.
'Are you, for example, a hundred?' said Mr Wonka. 'Or a hundred and ten? Or a hundred and twenty?'
'It's no good,' she croaked. 'I never did have a head for numbers.'
'This is a catastrophe!' cried Mr Wonka. 'If you can't tell me how old you are, I can't help you! I dare not risk an overdose!'
Gloom settled upon the entire company, including for once Mr Wonka himself. 'You've messed it up good and proper this time, haven't you?' said Mrs Bucket.
'Grandma,' Charlie said, moving forward to the bed. 'Listen, Grandma. Don't worry about exactly how old you might be. Try to think of a happening instead … think of something that happened to you … anything you like … as far back as you can … it may help us …'
'Lots of things happened to me, Charlie … so many many things happened to me …'
'But can you remember any of them, Grandma?'
'Oh, I don't know, my darling … I suppose I could remember one or two if I thought hard enough …'
'Good, Grandma, good!' said Charlie eagerly. 'Now what is the very earliest thing you can remember in your whole life?'
'Oh, my dear boy, that really would be going back a few years, wouldn't it?'
'When you were little, Grandma, like me. Can't you remember anything you did when you were little?'
The tiny sunken black eyes glimmered faintly and a sort of smile touched the corners of the almost invisible little slit of a mouth. 'There was a ship,' she said. 'I can remember a ship … I couldn't ever forget that ship …'
'Go on, Grandma! A ship! What sort of a ship? Did you sail on her?' 'Of course I sailed on her, my darling … we all sailed on her …' 'Where from? Where to?' Charlie went on eagerly.
'Oh no, I couldn't tell you that … I was just a tiny little girl …' She lay back on the pillow and closed her eyes. Charlie watched her, waiting for something more. Everybody waited. No one moved.
'… It had a lovely name, that ship … there was something beautiful … something so beautiful about that name … but of course I couldn't possibly remember it …'
Charlie, who had been sitting on the edge of the bed, suddenly jumped up. His face was shining with excitement. 'If I said the name, Grandma, would you remember it then?'
'I might, Charlie … yes … I think I might …' 'THE MAYFLOWER!' cried Charlie.
The old woman's head jerked up off the pillow. 'That's it!' she croaked. 'You've got it, Charlie! The Mayflower … Such a lovely name …'
'Grandpa!' Charlie called out, dancing with excitement. 'What year did the Mayflower sail for America?'
'The Mayflower sailed out of Plymouth Harbour on September the sixth, sixteen hundred and twenty,' said Grandpa Joe.
'Plymouth …' croaked the old woman. 'That rings a bell, too … Yes, it might easily have been Plymouth …'
'Sixteen hundred and twenty!' cried Charlie. 'Oh, my heavens above! That means you're … you do it, Grandpa!'
'Well now,' said Grandpa Joe. 'Take sixteen hundred and twenty away from nineteen hundred and seventy-two … that leaves … don't rush me now, Charlie … That leaves three hundred … and … and fifty-two.'
'Jumping jackrabbits!' yelled Mr Bucket. 'She's three hundred and fifty-two years old!'
'She's more,' said Charlie. 'How old did you say you were, Grandma, when you sailed on the Mayflower? Were you about eight?'
'I think I was even younger than that, my darling … I was only a bitty little girl … probably no more than six …'
'Then she's three hundred and fifty-eight!' gasped Charlie.
'That's Vita-Wonk for you,' said Mr Wonka proudly. 'I told you it was powerful stuff
'Three hundred and fifty-eight!' said Mr Bucket. 'It's unbelievable!'
'Just imagine the things she must have seen in her lifetime!' said Grandpa Joe.
'My poor old mother!' wailed Mrs Bucket. 'What on earth …'
'Patience, dear lady,' said Mr Wonka. 'Now comes the interesting part. Bring on the Wonka-Vite!'
An Oompa-Loompa ran forward with a large bottle and gave it to Mr Wonka. He put it on the bed. 'How young does she want to be?' he asked.
'Seventy-eight,' said Mrs Bucket firmly. 'Exactly where she was before all this nonsense started!'
'Surely she'd like to be a bit younger than that?' said Mr Wonka. 'Certainly not!' said Mrs Bucket. 'It's too risky!'
'Too risky, too risky!' croaked Grandma Georgina. 'You'll only Minus me again if you try to be clever!'
'Have it your own way,' said Mr Wonka. 'Now then, I've got to do a few sums.' Another Oompa-Loompa trotted forward, holding up a blackboard. Mr Wonka took a piece of chalk from his pocket and wrote:
'Fourteen pills of Wonka-Vite exactly,' said Mr Wonka. The Oompa-Loompa took the blackboard away. Mr Wonka picked up the bottle from the bed and opened it and counted out fourteen of the little brilliant yellow pills. 'Water!' he said. Yet another Oompa-Loompa ran forward with a glass of water. Mr Wonka tipped all fourteen pills into the glass. The water bubbled and frothed. 'Drink it while it's fizzing,' he said, holding the glass up to Grandma Georgina's lips. 'All in one gulp!'
She drank it.
Mr Wonka sprang back and took a large brass clock from his pocket. 'Don't forget,' he cried, 'it's a year a second! She's got two hundred and eighty years to lose! That'll take her four minutes and forty seconds! Watch the centuries fall away!'
The room was so silent they could hear the ticking of Mr Wonka's clock. At first nothing much happened to the ancient person lying on the bed. She closed her eyes and lay back. Now and again, the puckered skin of her face gave a twitch and her little hands jerked up and down, but that was all …
'One minute gone!' called Mr Wonka. 'She's sixty years younger.' 'She looks just the same to me,' said Mr Bucket.
'Of course she does,' said Mr Wonka. 'What's a mere sixty years when you're over three hundred to start with!'
'Are you all right, Mother?' said Mrs Bucket anxiously. 'Talk to me, Mother!'
'Two minutes gone!' called Mr Wonka. 'She's one hundred and twenty years younger!'
And now definite changes were beginning to show in the old woman's face. The skin was quivering all over and some of the deepest wrinkles were becoming less and less deep, the mouth less sunken, the nose more prominent.
'Mother!' cried Mrs Bucket. 'Are you all right? Speak to me, Mother, please!'
Suddenly, with a suddenness that made everyone jump, the old woman sat bolt upright in bed and shouted, 'Did you hear the news! Admiral Nelson has beaten the French at Trafalgar!'
'She's going crazy!' said Mr Bucket.
'Not at all,' said Mr Wonka. 'She's going through the nineteenth century.'
'Three minutes gone!' said Mr Wonka.
Every second now she was growing slightly less and less shrivelled, becoming more and more lively. It was a marvellous thing to watch.
'Gettysburg!' she cried. 'General Lee is on the run!'
And a few seconds later she let out a great wail of anguish and said, 'He's dead, he's dead, he's dead!'
'Who's dead?' said Mr Bucket, craning forward.
'Lincoln!' she wailed. 'There goes the train …'
'She must have seen it!' said Charlie. 'She must have been there!'
'She is there,' said Mr Wonka. 'At least she was a few seconds ago.'
'Will someone please explain to me,' said Mrs Bucket, 'what on earth …'
'Four minutes gone!' said Mr Wonka. 'Only forty seconds left! Only forty more years to lose!'
'Grandma!' cried Charlie, running forward. 'You're looking almost exactly like you used to! Oh, I'm so glad!'
'Just as long as it all stops when it's meant to,' said Mrs Bucket. 'I'll bet it doesn't,' said Mr Bucket. 'Something always goes wrong.'
'Not when I'm in charge of it, sir,' said Mr Wonka. 'Time's up! She is now seventy-eight years old! How do you feel, dear lady? Is everything all right?'
'I feel tolerable,' she said. 'Just tolerable. But that's no thanks to you, you meddling old mackerel!'
There she was again, the same cantankerous grumbling old Grandma Georgina that Charlie had known so well before it all started. Mrs Bucket flung her arms around her and began weeping with joy. The old woman pushed her aside and said, 'What, may I ask, are those two silly babies doing at the other end of the bed?'
'One of them's your husband,' said Mr Bucket.
'Rubbish!' she said. 'Where is George?'
'I'm afraid it's true, Mother,' said Mrs Bucket. 'That's him on the left. The other one's Josephine …'
'You … you chiselling old cheeseburger!' she shouted, pointing a fierce finger at Mr Wonka. 'What in the name of …'
'Now now now now now!' said Mr Wonka. 'Let us not for mercy's sake have another row so late in the day. If everyone will keep their hair on and leave this to Charlie and me, we shall have them exactly where they used to be in the flick of a fly's wing!'
The Elevator stopped. The doors slid open. And there was the Chocolate Room and the chocolate river and the Oompa-Loompas and in the middle of it all the great bed belonging to the old grandparents. 'Charlie!' said Grandpa Joe, rushing forward. 'Thank heavens you're back!' Charlie hugged him. Then he hugged his mother and his father. 'Is she here?' he said. 'Grandma Georgina?'
Nobody answered. Nobody did anything except Grandpa Joe, who pointed to the bed. He pointed but he didn't look where he was pointing. None of them looked at the bed — except Charlie. He walked past them all to get a better view, and he saw at one end the two babies, Grandma Josephine and Grandpa George, both tucked in and sleeping peacefully. At the other end …
'Don't be alarmed,' said Mr Wonka, running up and placing a hand on Charlie's arm. 'She's bound to be just a teeny bit over-plussed. I warned you about that.'
'What have you done to her?' cried Mrs Bucket. 'My poor old mother!'
Propped up against the pillows at the other end of the bed was the most extraordinary-looking thing Charlie had ever seen! Was it some ancient fossil? It couldn't be that because it was moving slightly! And now it was making sounds! Croaking sounds — the kind of sounds a very old frog might make if it knew a few words. 'Well, well, well,' it croaked. 'If it isn't dear Charlie.'
'Grandma!' cried Charlie. 'Grandma Georgina! Oh … Oh … Oh!'
Her tiny face was like a pickled walnut. There were such masses of creases and wrinkles that the mouth and eyes and even the nose were sunken almost out of sight. Her hair was pure white and her hands, which were resting on top of the blanket, were just little lumps of wrinkly skin.
The presence of this ancient creature seemed to have terrified not only Mr and Mrs Bucket, but Grandpa Joe as well. They stood well back, away from the bed. Mr Wonka, on the other hand, was as happy as ever. 'My dear lady!' he cried, advancing to the edge of the bed and clasping one of those tiny wrinkled hands in both of his. 'Welcome home! And how are you feeling on this bright and glorious day?'
'Not too bad,' croaked Grandma Georgina. 'Not too bad at all … considering my age.'
'Good for you!' said Mr Wonka. 'Atta girl! All we've got to do now is find out exactly how old you are! Then we shall be able to take further action!'
'You're taking no further action around here,' said Mrs Bucket, tight-lipped. 'You've done enough damage already!'
'But my dear old muddleheaded mugwump,' said Mr Wonka, turning to Mrs Bucket. 'What does it matter that the old girl has become a trifle too old? We can put that right in a jiffy! Have you forgotten Wonka-Vite and how every tablet makes you twenty years younger? We shall bring her back! We shall transform her into a blossoming blushing maiden in the twink of an eye!'
'What good is that when her husband's not even out of his nappies yet?' wailed Mrs Bucket, pointing a finger at the one-year-old Grandpa George, so peacefully sleeping.
'Madam,' said Mr Wonka, 'let us do one thing at a time …'
'I forbid you to give her that beastly Wonka-Vite!' said Mrs Bucket. 'You'll turn her into a Minus again just as sure as I'm standing here!'
'I don't want to be a Minus!' croaked Grandma Georgina. 'If I ever have to go back to that beastly Minusland again, the Gnoolies will knickle me!'
'Fear not!' said Mr Wonka. 'This time I myself will supervise the giving of the medicine. I shall personally see to it that you get the correct dosage. But listen very carefully now! I cannot work out how many pills to give you until I know exactly how old you are! That's obvious, isn't it?'
'It is not obvious at all,' said Mrs Bucket. 'Why can't you give her one pill at a time and play it safe?'
'Impossible, madam. In very serious cases such as this one, Wonka-Vite doesn't work at all when given in small doses. You've got to throw everything at her in one go. You've got to hit her with it hard. A single pill wouldn't even begin to shift her. She's too far gone for that. It's all or nothing.'
'No,' said Mrs Bucket firmly.
'Yes,' said Mr Wonka. 'Dear lady, please listen to me. If you have a very severe headache and you need three aspirins to cure it, it's no good taking only one at a time and waiting four hours between each. You'll never cure yourself that way. You've got to gulp them all down in one go. It's the same with Wonka-Vite. May I proceed?'
'Oh, all right, I suppose you'll have to,' said Mrs Bucket.
'Good,' said Mr Wonka, giving a little jump and twirling his feet in the air. 'Now then, how old are you, my dear Grandma Georgina?'
'I don't know,' she croaked. 'I lost count of that years and years ago.'
'Don't you have any idea?' said Mr Wonka.
'Of course I don't,' gibbered the old woman. 'Nor would you if you were as old as I am.'
'Think!' said Mr Wonka. 'You've got to think!'
The tiny old wrinkled brown walnut face wrinkled itself up more than ever. The others stood waiting. The Oompa-Loompas, enthralled by the sight of this ancient object, were all edging closer and closer to the bed. The two babies slept on.
'Are you, for example, a hundred?' said Mr Wonka. 'Or a hundred and ten? Or a hundred and twenty?'
'It's no good,' she croaked. 'I never did have a head for numbers.'
'This is a catastrophe!' cried Mr Wonka. 'If you can't tell me how old you are, I can't help you! I dare not risk an overdose!'
Gloom settled upon the entire company, including for once Mr Wonka himself. 'You've messed it up good and proper this time, haven't you?' said Mrs Bucket.
'Grandma,' Charlie said, moving forward to the bed. 'Listen, Grandma. Don't worry about exactly how old you might be. Try to think of a happening instead … think of something that happened to you … anything you like … as far back as you can … it may help us …'
'Lots of things happened to me, Charlie … so many many things happened to me …'
'But can you remember any of them, Grandma?'
'Oh, I don't know, my darling … I suppose I could remember one or two if I thought hard enough …'
'Good, Grandma, good!' said Charlie eagerly. 'Now what is the very earliest thing you can remember in your whole life?'
'Oh, my dear boy, that really would be going back a few years, wouldn't it?'
'When you were little, Grandma, like me. Can't you remember anything you did when you were little?'
The tiny sunken black eyes glimmered faintly and a sort of smile touched the corners of the almost invisible little slit of a mouth. 'There was a ship,' she said. 'I can remember a ship … I couldn't ever forget that ship …'
'Go on, Grandma! A ship! What sort of a ship? Did you sail on her?' 'Of course I sailed on her, my darling … we all sailed on her …' 'Where from? Where to?' Charlie went on eagerly.
'Oh no, I couldn't tell you that … I was just a tiny little girl …' She lay back on the pillow and closed her eyes. Charlie watched her, waiting for something more. Everybody waited. No one moved.
'… It had a lovely name, that ship … there was something beautiful … something so beautiful about that name … but of course I couldn't possibly remember it …'
Charlie, who had been sitting on the edge of the bed, suddenly jumped up. His face was shining with excitement. 'If I said the name, Grandma, would you remember it then?'
'I might, Charlie … yes … I think I might …' 'THE MAYFLOWER!' cried Charlie.
The old woman's head jerked up off the pillow. 'That's it!' she croaked. 'You've got it, Charlie! The Mayflower … Such a lovely name …'
'Grandpa!' Charlie called out, dancing with excitement. 'What year did the Mayflower sail for America?'
'The Mayflower sailed out of Plymouth Harbour on September the sixth, sixteen hundred and twenty,' said Grandpa Joe.
'Plymouth …' croaked the old woman. 'That rings a bell, too … Yes, it might easily have been Plymouth …'
'Sixteen hundred and twenty!' cried Charlie. 'Oh, my heavens above! That means you're … you do it, Grandpa!'
'Well now,' said Grandpa Joe. 'Take sixteen hundred and twenty away from nineteen hundred and seventy-two … that leaves … don't rush me now, Charlie … That leaves three hundred … and … and fifty-two.'
'Jumping jackrabbits!' yelled Mr Bucket. 'She's three hundred and fifty-two years old!'
'She's more,' said Charlie. 'How old did you say you were, Grandma, when you sailed on the Mayflower? Were you about eight?'
'I think I was even younger than that, my darling … I was only a bitty little girl … probably no more than six …'
'Then she's three hundred and fifty-eight!' gasped Charlie.
'That's Vita-Wonk for you,' said Mr Wonka proudly. 'I told you it was powerful stuff
'Three hundred and fifty-eight!' said Mr Bucket. 'It's unbelievable!'
'Just imagine the things she must have seen in her lifetime!' said Grandpa Joe.
'My poor old mother!' wailed Mrs Bucket. 'What on earth …'
'Patience, dear lady,' said Mr Wonka. 'Now comes the interesting part. Bring on the Wonka-Vite!'
An Oompa-Loompa ran forward with a large bottle and gave it to Mr Wonka. He put it on the bed. 'How young does she want to be?' he asked.
'Seventy-eight,' said Mrs Bucket firmly. 'Exactly where she was before all this nonsense started!'
'Surely she'd like to be a bit younger than that?' said Mr Wonka. 'Certainly not!' said Mrs Bucket. 'It's too risky!'
'Too risky, too risky!' croaked Grandma Georgina. 'You'll only Minus me again if you try to be clever!'
'Have it your own way,' said Mr Wonka. 'Now then, I've got to do a few sums.' Another Oompa-Loompa trotted forward, holding up a blackboard. Mr Wonka took a piece of chalk from his pocket and wrote:
'Fourteen pills of Wonka-Vite exactly,' said Mr Wonka. The Oompa-Loompa took the blackboard away. Mr Wonka picked up the bottle from the bed and opened it and counted out fourteen of the little brilliant yellow pills. 'Water!' he said. Yet another Oompa-Loompa ran forward with a glass of water. Mr Wonka tipped all fourteen pills into the glass. The water bubbled and frothed. 'Drink it while it's fizzing,' he said, holding the glass up to Grandma Georgina's lips. 'All in one gulp!'
She drank it.
Mr Wonka sprang back and took a large brass clock from his pocket. 'Don't forget,' he cried, 'it's a year a second! She's got two hundred and eighty years to lose! That'll take her four minutes and forty seconds! Watch the centuries fall away!'
The room was so silent they could hear the ticking of Mr Wonka's clock. At first nothing much happened to the ancient person lying on the bed. She closed her eyes and lay back. Now and again, the puckered skin of her face gave a twitch and her little hands jerked up and down, but that was all …
'One minute gone!' called Mr Wonka. 'She's sixty years younger.' 'She looks just the same to me,' said Mr Bucket.
'Of course she does,' said Mr Wonka. 'What's a mere sixty years when you're over three hundred to start with!'
'Are you all right, Mother?' said Mrs Bucket anxiously. 'Talk to me, Mother!'
'Two minutes gone!' called Mr Wonka. 'She's one hundred and twenty years younger!'
And now definite changes were beginning to show in the old woman's face. The skin was quivering all over and some of the deepest wrinkles were becoming less and less deep, the mouth less sunken, the nose more prominent.
'Mother!' cried Mrs Bucket. 'Are you all right? Speak to me, Mother, please!'
Suddenly, with a suddenness that made everyone jump, the old woman sat bolt upright in bed and shouted, 'Did you hear the news! Admiral Nelson has beaten the French at Trafalgar!'
'She's going crazy!' said Mr Bucket.
'Not at all,' said Mr Wonka. 'She's going through the nineteenth century.'
'Three minutes gone!' said Mr Wonka.
Every second now she was growing slightly less and less shrivelled, becoming more and more lively. It was a marvellous thing to watch.
'Gettysburg!' she cried. 'General Lee is on the run!'
And a few seconds later she let out a great wail of anguish and said, 'He's dead, he's dead, he's dead!'
'Who's dead?' said Mr Bucket, craning forward.
'Lincoln!' she wailed. 'There goes the train …'
'She must have seen it!' said Charlie. 'She must have been there!'
'She is there,' said Mr Wonka. 'At least she was a few seconds ago.'
'Will someone please explain to me,' said Mrs Bucket, 'what on earth …'
'Four minutes gone!' said Mr Wonka. 'Only forty seconds left! Only forty more years to lose!'
'Grandma!' cried Charlie, running forward. 'You're looking almost exactly like you used to! Oh, I'm so glad!'
'Just as long as it all stops when it's meant to,' said Mrs Bucket. 'I'll bet it doesn't,' said Mr Bucket. 'Something always goes wrong.'
'Not when I'm in charge of it, sir,' said Mr Wonka. 'Time's up! She is now seventy-eight years old! How do you feel, dear lady? Is everything all right?'
'I feel tolerable,' she said. 'Just tolerable. But that's no thanks to you, you meddling old mackerel!'
There she was again, the same cantankerous grumbling old Grandma Georgina that Charlie had known so well before it all started. Mrs Bucket flung her arms around her and began weeping with joy. The old woman pushed her aside and said, 'What, may I ask, are those two silly babies doing at the other end of the bed?'
'One of them's your husband,' said Mr Bucket.
'Rubbish!' she said. 'Where is George?'
'I'm afraid it's true, Mother,' said Mrs Bucket. 'That's him on the left. The other one's Josephine …'
'You … you chiselling old cheeseburger!' she shouted, pointing a fierce finger at Mr Wonka. 'What in the name of …'
'Now now now now now!' said Mr Wonka. 'Let us not for mercy's sake have another row so late in the day. If everyone will keep their hair on and leave this to Charlie and me, we shall have them exactly where they used to be in the flick of a fly's wing!'
19
The Babies Grow Up
'Bring on the Vita-Wonk!' said Mr Wonka. 'We'll soon fix these two babies.'
An Oompa-Loompa ran forward with a small bottle and a couple of silver teaspoons.
'Wait just one minute!' snapped Grandma Georgina. 'What sort of devilish dumpery are you up to now?'
'It's all right, Grandma,' said Charlie. 'I promise you it's all right. Vita-Wonk does the opposite to Wonka-Vite. It makes you older. It's what we gave you when you were a Minus. It saved you!'
'You gave me too much!' snapped the old woman. 'We had to, Grandma.'
'And now you want to do the same to Grandpa George!' 'Of course we don't,' said Charlie.
'I finished up three hundred and fifty-eight years old!' she went on. 'What's to stop you making another little mistake and giving him fifty times more than you gave me? Then I'd suddenly have a twenty-thousand-year-old caveman in bed beside me! Imagine that, and him with a big knobby club in one hand and dragging me around by my hair with the other! No, thank you!'
'Grandma,' Charlie said patiently. 'With you we had to use a spray because you were a Minus. You were a ghost. But here Mr Wonka can …'
'Don't talk to me about that man!' she cried. 'He's batty as a bullfrog!'
'No, Grandma, he is not. And here he can measure it out exactly right, drop by drop, and feed it into their mouths. That's true, isn't it, Mr Wonka?'
'Charlie,' said Mr Wonka. 'I can see that the factory is going to be in good hands when I retire. You learn very fast. I am so pleased I chose you, my dear boy, so very pleased. Now then, what's the verdict? Do we leave them as babies or do we grow them up with Vita-Wonk?'
'You go ahead, Mr Wonka,' said Grandpa Joe. 'I'd like you to grow my Josie up so she's just the same as before — eighty years old.'
'Thank you, sir,' said Mr Wonka. 'I appreciate the confidence you place in me. But what about the other one, Grandpa George?'
'Oh, all right, then,' said Grandma Georgina. 'But if he ends up a caveman I don't want him in this bed any more!'
'That's settled then!' said Mr Wonka. 'Come along, Charlie! We'll do them both together. You hold one spoon and I'll hold the other. I shall measure out four drops and four drops only into each spoon and we'll wake them up and pop it into their mouths.'
'Which one shall I do, Mr Wonka?'
'You do Grandma Josephine, the tiny one. I'll do Grandpa George, the one-year-old. Here's your spoon.'
Charlie took the spoon and held it out. Mr Wonka opened the bottle and dripped four drops of oily black liquid into Charlie's spoon. Then he did the same to his own. He handed the bottle back to the Oompa-Loompa.
'Shouldn't someone hold the babies while you give it?' said Grandpa Joe. 'I'll hold Grandma Josephine.'
'Are you mad!' said Mr Wonka. 'Don't you realize that Vita-Wonk acts instantly? It's not one year a second like Wonka-Vite. Vita-Wonk is as quick as lightning! The moment the medicine is swallowed — ping! — and it all happens! The getting bigger and the growing older and everything else all happens in one second! So don't you see, my dear sir,' he said to Grandpa Joe, 'that one moment you'd be holding a tiny baby in your arms and just one second later you'd find yourself staggering about with an eighty-year-old woman and you'd drop her like a ton of bricks on the floor!'
'I see what you mean,' said Grandpa Joe. 'All set, Charlie?'
'All set, Mr Wonka.' Charlie moved around the bed to where the tiny sleeping baby lay. He placed one hand behind her head and lifted it. The baby awoke and started yelling. Mr Wonka was on the other side of the bed doing the same to the one-year-old George. 'Both together now, Charlie!' said Mr Wonka. 'Ready, steady, go! Pop it in!' Charlie pushed his spoon into the open mouth of the baby and tipped the drops down her throat.
'Make sure she swallows it!' cried Mr Wonka. 'It won't work until it gets into their tummies!'
It is difficult to explain what happened next, and whatever it was, it only lasted for one second. A second is about as long as it takes you to say aloud and quickly, 'one-two-three-four-five'. And that is how long it took, with Charlie watching closely, for the tiny baby to grow and swell and wrinkle into the eighty-year-old Grandma Josephine. It was a frightening thing to see. It was like an explosion. A small baby suddenly exploded into an old woman, and Charlie all at once found himself staring straight into the well-known and much-loved wrinkly old face of his Grandma Josephine. 'Hello, my darling,' she said. 'Where have you come from?'
'Josie!' cried Grandpa Joe, rushing forward. 'How marvellous! You're back!' 'I didn't know I'd been away,' she said.
Grandpa George had also made a successful comeback. 'You were better-looking as a baby,' Grandma Georgina said to him. 'But I'm glad you've grown up again, George … for one reason.'
'What's that?' asked Grandpa George. 'You won't wet the bed any more.'
An Oompa-Loompa ran forward with a small bottle and a couple of silver teaspoons.
'Wait just one minute!' snapped Grandma Georgina. 'What sort of devilish dumpery are you up to now?'
'It's all right, Grandma,' said Charlie. 'I promise you it's all right. Vita-Wonk does the opposite to Wonka-Vite. It makes you older. It's what we gave you when you were a Minus. It saved you!'
'You gave me too much!' snapped the old woman. 'We had to, Grandma.'
'And now you want to do the same to Grandpa George!' 'Of course we don't,' said Charlie.
'I finished up three hundred and fifty-eight years old!' she went on. 'What's to stop you making another little mistake and giving him fifty times more than you gave me? Then I'd suddenly have a twenty-thousand-year-old caveman in bed beside me! Imagine that, and him with a big knobby club in one hand and dragging me around by my hair with the other! No, thank you!'
'Grandma,' Charlie said patiently. 'With you we had to use a spray because you were a Minus. You were a ghost. But here Mr Wonka can …'
'Don't talk to me about that man!' she cried. 'He's batty as a bullfrog!'
'No, Grandma, he is not. And here he can measure it out exactly right, drop by drop, and feed it into their mouths. That's true, isn't it, Mr Wonka?'
'Charlie,' said Mr Wonka. 'I can see that the factory is going to be in good hands when I retire. You learn very fast. I am so pleased I chose you, my dear boy, so very pleased. Now then, what's the verdict? Do we leave them as babies or do we grow them up with Vita-Wonk?'
'You go ahead, Mr Wonka,' said Grandpa Joe. 'I'd like you to grow my Josie up so she's just the same as before — eighty years old.'
'Thank you, sir,' said Mr Wonka. 'I appreciate the confidence you place in me. But what about the other one, Grandpa George?'
'Oh, all right, then,' said Grandma Georgina. 'But if he ends up a caveman I don't want him in this bed any more!'
'That's settled then!' said Mr Wonka. 'Come along, Charlie! We'll do them both together. You hold one spoon and I'll hold the other. I shall measure out four drops and four drops only into each spoon and we'll wake them up and pop it into their mouths.'
'Which one shall I do, Mr Wonka?'
'You do Grandma Josephine, the tiny one. I'll do Grandpa George, the one-year-old. Here's your spoon.'
Charlie took the spoon and held it out. Mr Wonka opened the bottle and dripped four drops of oily black liquid into Charlie's spoon. Then he did the same to his own. He handed the bottle back to the Oompa-Loompa.
'Shouldn't someone hold the babies while you give it?' said Grandpa Joe. 'I'll hold Grandma Josephine.'
'Are you mad!' said Mr Wonka. 'Don't you realize that Vita-Wonk acts instantly? It's not one year a second like Wonka-Vite. Vita-Wonk is as quick as lightning! The moment the medicine is swallowed — ping! — and it all happens! The getting bigger and the growing older and everything else all happens in one second! So don't you see, my dear sir,' he said to Grandpa Joe, 'that one moment you'd be holding a tiny baby in your arms and just one second later you'd find yourself staggering about with an eighty-year-old woman and you'd drop her like a ton of bricks on the floor!'
'I see what you mean,' said Grandpa Joe. 'All set, Charlie?'
'All set, Mr Wonka.' Charlie moved around the bed to where the tiny sleeping baby lay. He placed one hand behind her head and lifted it. The baby awoke and started yelling. Mr Wonka was on the other side of the bed doing the same to the one-year-old George. 'Both together now, Charlie!' said Mr Wonka. 'Ready, steady, go! Pop it in!' Charlie pushed his spoon into the open mouth of the baby and tipped the drops down her throat.
'Make sure she swallows it!' cried Mr Wonka. 'It won't work until it gets into their tummies!'
It is difficult to explain what happened next, and whatever it was, it only lasted for one second. A second is about as long as it takes you to say aloud and quickly, 'one-two-three-four-five'. And that is how long it took, with Charlie watching closely, for the tiny baby to grow and swell and wrinkle into the eighty-year-old Grandma Josephine. It was a frightening thing to see. It was like an explosion. A small baby suddenly exploded into an old woman, and Charlie all at once found himself staring straight into the well-known and much-loved wrinkly old face of his Grandma Josephine. 'Hello, my darling,' she said. 'Where have you come from?'
'Josie!' cried Grandpa Joe, rushing forward. 'How marvellous! You're back!' 'I didn't know I'd been away,' she said.
Grandpa George had also made a successful comeback. 'You were better-looking as a baby,' Grandma Georgina said to him. 'But I'm glad you've grown up again, George … for one reason.'
'What's that?' asked Grandpa George. 'You won't wet the bed any more.'
20
How to Get Someone out of Bed
'I am sure,' said Mr Wonka, addressing Grandpa George, Grandma Georgina and Grandma
Josephine, 'I am quite sure the three of you, after all that, will now want to jump out of bed
and lend a hand in running the Chocolate Factory.'
'Who, us?' said Grandma Josephine. 'Yes, you,' said Mr Wonka.
'Are you crazy?' said Grandma Georgina. 'I'm staying right here where I am in this nice comfortable bed, thank you very much!'
'Me, too!' said Grandpa George.
At that moment, there was a sudden commotion among the Oompa-Loompas at the far end of the Chocolate Room. There was a buzz of excited chatter and a lot of running about and waving of arms, and out of all this a single Oompa-Loompa emerged and came rushing toward Mr Wonka, carrying a huge envelope in his hands. He came up close to Mr Wonka. He started whispering. Mr Wonka bent down low to listen.
'Outside the factory gates?' cried Mr Wonka. 'Men! … What sort of men? … Yes, but do they look dangerous? … Are they ACTING dangerously? … And a what? … A HELICOPTER! … And these men came out of it? … They gave you this? …'
Mr Wonka grabbed the huge envelope and quickly slit it open and pulled out the folded letter inside. There was absolute silence as he skimmed swiftly over what was written on the paper. Nobody moved. Charlie began to feel cold. He knew something dreadful was going to happen. There was a very definite smell of danger in the air. The men outside the gates, the helicopter, the nervousness of the Oompa-Loompas … He was watching Mr Wonka's face, searching for a clue, for some change in expression that would tell him how bad the news was.
'Great whistling whangdoodles!' cried Mr Wonka, leaping so high in the air that when he landed his legs gave way and he crashed on to his backside.
'Snorting snozzwangers!' he yelled, picking himself up and waving the letter about as though he were swatting mosquitoes. 'Listen to this, all of you! Just you listen to this!' He began to read aloud:
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
D.C.
TO MR WILLY WONKA.
SIR
TODAY THE ENTIRE NATION, INDEED THE WHOLE WORLD, IS REJOICING AT THE SAFE RETURN OF OUR TRANSPORT CAPSULE FROM SPACE WITH 136 SOULS ON BOARD. HAD IT NOT BEEN FOR THE HELP THEY RECEIVED FROM AN UNKNOWN SPACESHIP, THESE 136 PEOPLE WOULD NEVER HAVE COME BACK. IT HAS BEEN REPORTED TO ME THAT THE COURAGE SHOWN BY THE EIGHT ASTRONAUTS ABOARD THIS UNKNOWN SPACESHIP WAS EXTRAORDINARY. OUR RADAR STATIONS, BY TRACKING THIS SPACESHIP ON ITS RETURN TO EARTH, HAVE DISCOVERED THAT IT SPLASHED DOWN IN A PLACE KNOWN AS WONKA'S CHOCOLATE FACTORY. THAT, SIR, IS WHY THIS LETTER IS BEING DELIVERED TO YOU.
I WISH NOW TO SHOW THE GRATITUDE OF THE NATION BY INVITING ALL EIGHT OF THOSE INCREDIBLY BRAVE ASTRONAUTS TO COME AND STAY IN THE WHITE HOUSE FOR A FEW DAYS AS MY HONOURED GUESTS.
I AM ARRANGING A SPECIAL CELEBRATION PARTY IN THE BLUE ROOM THIS EVENING AT WHICH I MYSELF WILL PIN MEDALS FOR BRAVERY UPON ALL EIGHT OF THESE GALLANT FLIERS. THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSONS IN THE LAND WILL BE PRESENT AT THIS GATHERING TO SALUTE THE HEROES WHOSE DAZZLING DEEDS WILL BE WRITTEN FOR EVER IN THE HISTORY OF OUR NATION. AMONG THOSE ATTENDING WILL BE THE VICE-PRESIDENT (MISS ELVIRA TIBBS), ALL THE MEMBERS OF MY CABINET, THE CHIEFS OF THE ARMY, THE NAVY AND THE AIR FORCE, ALL MEMBERS OF THE CONGRESS. A FAMOUS SWORD-SWALLOWER FROM AFGHANISTAN WHO IS NOW TEACHING ME TO EAT MY WORDS (WHAT YOU DO IS YOU TAKE THE S OFF THE BEGINNING OF THE SWORD AND PUT IT ON THE END BEFORE YOU SWALLOW IT). AND WHO ELSE IS COMING? OH YES, MY CHIEF INTERPRETER, AND THE GOVERNORS OF EVERY STATE IN THE UNION, AND OF COURSE MY CAT, MRS TAUBSYPUSS.
A HELICOPTER AWAITS ALL EIGHT OF YOU OUTSIDE THE FACTORY GATES. I MYSELF AWAIT YOUR ARRIVAL AT THE WHITE HOUSE WITH THE VERY GREATEST PLEASURE AND IMPATIENCE.
I BEG TO REMAIN, SIR, MOST SINCERELY YOURS
LANCELOT R. GILLIGRASS
President of the United States
P.S. COULD YOU PLEASE BRING ME A FEW WONKA FUDGEMALLOW DELIGHTS. I LOVE THEM SO MUCH BUT EVERYBODY AROUND HERE KEEPS STEALING MINE OUT OF THE DRAWER IN MY DESK. AND DON'T TELL
NANNY.
Mr Wonka stopped reading. And in the stillness that followed Charlie could hear people breathing. He could hear them breathing in and out much faster than usual. And there were other things, too. There were so many feelings and passions and there was so much sudden happiness swirling around in the air it made his head spin. Grandpa Joe was the first to say something … 'Yippeeeeeeeeeee!' he yelled out, and he flew across the room and caught Charlie by the hands and the two of them started dancing away along the bank of the chocolate river. 'We're going, Charlie!' sang Grandpa Joe. 'We're going to the White House after all!' Mr and Mrs Bucket were also dancing and laughing and singing, and Mr Wonka ran all over the room proudly showing the President's letter to the Oompa-Loompas. After a minute or so, Mr Wonka clapped his hands for attention. 'Come along, come along!' he called out. 'We mustn't dilly! We mustn't dally! Come on, Charlie! And you, sir, Grandpa Joe! And Mr and Mrs Bucket! The helicopter is outside the gates! We can't keep it waiting!' He began hustling the four of them toward the door.
'Hey!' screamed Grandma Georgina from the bed. 'What about us? We were invited too, don't you forget that!'
'It said all eight of us were invited!' cried Grandma Josephine. 'And that includes me!' said Grandpa George.
Mr Wonka turned and looked at them. 'Of course it includes you,' he said. 'But we can't possibly get that bed into a helicopter. It won't go through the door.'
'You mean … you mean if we don't get out of bed we can't come?' said Grandma Georgina.
'That's exactly what I mean,' said Mr Wonka. 'Keep going, Charlie,' he whispered, giving Charlie a little nudge. 'Keep walking toward the door.'
Suddenly, behind them, there was a great SWOOSH of blankets and sheets and a pinging of bedsprings as the three old people all exploded out of the bed together. They came sprinting after Mr Wonka, shouting, 'Wait for us! Wait for us!' It was amazing how fast they were running across the floor of the great Chocolate Room. Mr Wonka and Charlie and the others stood staring at them in wonder. They leaped across paths and over little bushes like gazelles in spring-time, with their bare legs flashing and their nightshirts flying out behind them.
Suddenly Grandma Josephine put the brakes on so hard she skidded five yards before coming to a stop. 'Wait!' she screamed. 'We must be mad! We can't go to a famous party in the White House in our nightshirts! We can't stand there practically naked in front of all those people while the President pins medals all over us!'
'Oh-h-h-h!' wailed Grandma Georgina. 'Oh, what are we going to do?' 'Don't you have any clothes with you at all?' asked Mr Wonka.
'Of course we don't!' said Grandma Josephine. 'We haven't been out of that bed for twenty years!'
'We can't go!' wailed Grandma Georgina. 'We'll have to stay behind!' 'Couldn't we buy something from a store?' said Grandpa George. 'What with?' said Grandma Josephine. 'We don't have any money!'
'Money!' cried Mr Wonka. 'Good gracious me, don't you go worrying about money! I've got plenty of that!'
'Listen,' said Charlie. 'Why couldn't we ask the helicopter to land on the roof of a big shop on the way over. Then you can all pop downstairs and buy exactly what you want!'
'Charlie!' cried Mr Wonka, grasping him by the hand. 'What would we do without you? You're brilliant! Come along everybody! We're off to stay in the White House!'
They all linked arms and went dancing out of the Chocolate Room and along the corridors and out through the front door into the open where the big helicopter was waiting near the factory gates. A group of extremely important-looking gentlemen came toward them and bowed.
'Well, Charlie,' said Grandpa Joe. 'It's certainly been a busy day.' 'It's not over yet,' Charlie said, laughing. 'It hasn't even begun.'
Josephine, 'I am quite sure the three of you, after all that, will now want to jump out of bed
and lend a hand in running the Chocolate Factory.'
'Who, us?' said Grandma Josephine. 'Yes, you,' said Mr Wonka.
'Are you crazy?' said Grandma Georgina. 'I'm staying right here where I am in this nice comfortable bed, thank you very much!'
'Me, too!' said Grandpa George.
At that moment, there was a sudden commotion among the Oompa-Loompas at the far end of the Chocolate Room. There was a buzz of excited chatter and a lot of running about and waving of arms, and out of all this a single Oompa-Loompa emerged and came rushing toward Mr Wonka, carrying a huge envelope in his hands. He came up close to Mr Wonka. He started whispering. Mr Wonka bent down low to listen.
'Outside the factory gates?' cried Mr Wonka. 'Men! … What sort of men? … Yes, but do they look dangerous? … Are they ACTING dangerously? … And a what? … A HELICOPTER! … And these men came out of it? … They gave you this? …'
Mr Wonka grabbed the huge envelope and quickly slit it open and pulled out the folded letter inside. There was absolute silence as he skimmed swiftly over what was written on the paper. Nobody moved. Charlie began to feel cold. He knew something dreadful was going to happen. There was a very definite smell of danger in the air. The men outside the gates, the helicopter, the nervousness of the Oompa-Loompas … He was watching Mr Wonka's face, searching for a clue, for some change in expression that would tell him how bad the news was.
'Great whistling whangdoodles!' cried Mr Wonka, leaping so high in the air that when he landed his legs gave way and he crashed on to his backside.
'Snorting snozzwangers!' he yelled, picking himself up and waving the letter about as though he were swatting mosquitoes. 'Listen to this, all of you! Just you listen to this!' He began to read aloud:
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
D.C.
TO MR WILLY WONKA.
SIR
TODAY THE ENTIRE NATION, INDEED THE WHOLE WORLD, IS REJOICING AT THE SAFE RETURN OF OUR TRANSPORT CAPSULE FROM SPACE WITH 136 SOULS ON BOARD. HAD IT NOT BEEN FOR THE HELP THEY RECEIVED FROM AN UNKNOWN SPACESHIP, THESE 136 PEOPLE WOULD NEVER HAVE COME BACK. IT HAS BEEN REPORTED TO ME THAT THE COURAGE SHOWN BY THE EIGHT ASTRONAUTS ABOARD THIS UNKNOWN SPACESHIP WAS EXTRAORDINARY. OUR RADAR STATIONS, BY TRACKING THIS SPACESHIP ON ITS RETURN TO EARTH, HAVE DISCOVERED THAT IT SPLASHED DOWN IN A PLACE KNOWN AS WONKA'S CHOCOLATE FACTORY. THAT, SIR, IS WHY THIS LETTER IS BEING DELIVERED TO YOU.
I WISH NOW TO SHOW THE GRATITUDE OF THE NATION BY INVITING ALL EIGHT OF THOSE INCREDIBLY BRAVE ASTRONAUTS TO COME AND STAY IN THE WHITE HOUSE FOR A FEW DAYS AS MY HONOURED GUESTS.
I AM ARRANGING A SPECIAL CELEBRATION PARTY IN THE BLUE ROOM THIS EVENING AT WHICH I MYSELF WILL PIN MEDALS FOR BRAVERY UPON ALL EIGHT OF THESE GALLANT FLIERS. THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSONS IN THE LAND WILL BE PRESENT AT THIS GATHERING TO SALUTE THE HEROES WHOSE DAZZLING DEEDS WILL BE WRITTEN FOR EVER IN THE HISTORY OF OUR NATION. AMONG THOSE ATTENDING WILL BE THE VICE-PRESIDENT (MISS ELVIRA TIBBS), ALL THE MEMBERS OF MY CABINET, THE CHIEFS OF THE ARMY, THE NAVY AND THE AIR FORCE, ALL MEMBERS OF THE CONGRESS. A FAMOUS SWORD-SWALLOWER FROM AFGHANISTAN WHO IS NOW TEACHING ME TO EAT MY WORDS (WHAT YOU DO IS YOU TAKE THE S OFF THE BEGINNING OF THE SWORD AND PUT IT ON THE END BEFORE YOU SWALLOW IT). AND WHO ELSE IS COMING? OH YES, MY CHIEF INTERPRETER, AND THE GOVERNORS OF EVERY STATE IN THE UNION, AND OF COURSE MY CAT, MRS TAUBSYPUSS.
A HELICOPTER AWAITS ALL EIGHT OF YOU OUTSIDE THE FACTORY GATES. I MYSELF AWAIT YOUR ARRIVAL AT THE WHITE HOUSE WITH THE VERY GREATEST PLEASURE AND IMPATIENCE.
I BEG TO REMAIN, SIR, MOST SINCERELY YOURS
LANCELOT R. GILLIGRASS
President of the United States
P.S. COULD YOU PLEASE BRING ME A FEW WONKA FUDGEMALLOW DELIGHTS. I LOVE THEM SO MUCH BUT EVERYBODY AROUND HERE KEEPS STEALING MINE OUT OF THE DRAWER IN MY DESK. AND DON'T TELL
NANNY.
Mr Wonka stopped reading. And in the stillness that followed Charlie could hear people breathing. He could hear them breathing in and out much faster than usual. And there were other things, too. There were so many feelings and passions and there was so much sudden happiness swirling around in the air it made his head spin. Grandpa Joe was the first to say something … 'Yippeeeeeeeeeee!' he yelled out, and he flew across the room and caught Charlie by the hands and the two of them started dancing away along the bank of the chocolate river. 'We're going, Charlie!' sang Grandpa Joe. 'We're going to the White House after all!' Mr and Mrs Bucket were also dancing and laughing and singing, and Mr Wonka ran all over the room proudly showing the President's letter to the Oompa-Loompas. After a minute or so, Mr Wonka clapped his hands for attention. 'Come along, come along!' he called out. 'We mustn't dilly! We mustn't dally! Come on, Charlie! And you, sir, Grandpa Joe! And Mr and Mrs Bucket! The helicopter is outside the gates! We can't keep it waiting!' He began hustling the four of them toward the door.
'Hey!' screamed Grandma Georgina from the bed. 'What about us? We were invited too, don't you forget that!'
'It said all eight of us were invited!' cried Grandma Josephine. 'And that includes me!' said Grandpa George.
Mr Wonka turned and looked at them. 'Of course it includes you,' he said. 'But we can't possibly get that bed into a helicopter. It won't go through the door.'
'You mean … you mean if we don't get out of bed we can't come?' said Grandma Georgina.
'That's exactly what I mean,' said Mr Wonka. 'Keep going, Charlie,' he whispered, giving Charlie a little nudge. 'Keep walking toward the door.'
Suddenly, behind them, there was a great SWOOSH of blankets and sheets and a pinging of bedsprings as the three old people all exploded out of the bed together. They came sprinting after Mr Wonka, shouting, 'Wait for us! Wait for us!' It was amazing how fast they were running across the floor of the great Chocolate Room. Mr Wonka and Charlie and the others stood staring at them in wonder. They leaped across paths and over little bushes like gazelles in spring-time, with their bare legs flashing and their nightshirts flying out behind them.
Suddenly Grandma Josephine put the brakes on so hard she skidded five yards before coming to a stop. 'Wait!' she screamed. 'We must be mad! We can't go to a famous party in the White House in our nightshirts! We can't stand there practically naked in front of all those people while the President pins medals all over us!'
'Oh-h-h-h!' wailed Grandma Georgina. 'Oh, what are we going to do?' 'Don't you have any clothes with you at all?' asked Mr Wonka.
'Of course we don't!' said Grandma Josephine. 'We haven't been out of that bed for twenty years!'
'We can't go!' wailed Grandma Georgina. 'We'll have to stay behind!' 'Couldn't we buy something from a store?' said Grandpa George. 'What with?' said Grandma Josephine. 'We don't have any money!'
'Money!' cried Mr Wonka. 'Good gracious me, don't you go worrying about money! I've got plenty of that!'
'Listen,' said Charlie. 'Why couldn't we ask the helicopter to land on the roof of a big shop on the way over. Then you can all pop downstairs and buy exactly what you want!'
'Charlie!' cried Mr Wonka, grasping him by the hand. 'What would we do without you? You're brilliant! Come along everybody! We're off to stay in the White House!'
They all linked arms and went dancing out of the Chocolate Room and along the corridors and out through the front door into the open where the big helicopter was waiting near the factory gates. A group of extremely important-looking gentlemen came toward them and bowed.
'Well, Charlie,' said Grandpa Joe. 'It's certainly been a busy day.' 'It's not over yet,' Charlie said, laughing. 'It hasn't even begun.'