But I haven’t yet told you about the one awful thing that tortured little Charlie, the lover of chocolate, more than anything else. This thing, for him, was far, far worse than seeing slabs of chocolate in the shop windows or watching other children munching bars of creamy chocolate right in front of him. It was the most terrible torturing thing you could imagine, and it was this:
In the town itself, actually within sight of the house in which Charlie lived, there was an ENORMOUS CHOCOLATE FACTORY!
Just imagine that!
And it wasn’t simply an ordinary enormous chocolate factory, either. It was the largest and most famous in the whole world! It was WONKA’S FACTORY, owned by a man called Mr Willy Wonka, the greatest inventor and maker of chocolates that there has ever been. And what a tremendous, marvellous place it was! It had huge iron gates leading into it, and a high wall surrounding it, and smoke belching from its chimneys, and strange whizzing sounds coming from deep inside it. And outside the walls, for half a mile around in every direction, the air was scented with the heavy rich smell of melting chocolate!
Twice a day, on his way to and from school, little Charlie Bucket had to walk right past the gates of the factory. And every time he went by, he would begin to walk very, very slowly, and he would hold his nose high in the air and take long deep sniffs of the gorgeous chocolatey smell all around him.
Oh, how he loved that smell!
And oh, how he wished he could go inside the factory and see what it was like!
2
Mr Willy Wonka’s Factory
In the evenings, after he had finished his supper of watery cabbage soup, Charlie always went into the room of his four grandparents to listen to their stories, and then afterwards to say good night.
Every one of these old people was over ninety. They were as shrivelled as prunes, and as bony as skeletons, and throughout the day, until Charlie made his appearance, they lay huddled in their one bed, two at either end, with nightcaps on to keep their heads warm, dozing the time away with nothing to do. But as soon as they heard the door opening, and heard Charlie’s voice saying, ‘Good evening, Grandpa Joe and Grandma Josephine, and Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina,’ then all four of them would suddenly sit up, and their old wrinkled faces would light up with smiles of pleasure — and the talking would begin. For they loved this little boy. He was the only bright thing in their lives, and his evening visits were something that they looked forward to all day long. Often, Charlie’s mother and father would come in as well, and stand by the door, listening to the stories that the old people told; and thus, for perhaps half an hour every night, this room would become a happy place, and the whole family would forget that it was hungry and poor.
One evening, when Charlie went in to see his grandparents, he said to them, ‘Is it really true that Wonka’s Chocolate Factory is the biggest in the world?’
‘True?’ cried all four of them at once. ‘Of course it’s true! Good heavens, didn’t you know that? It’s about fifty times as big as any other!’
‘And is Mr Willy Wonka really the cleverest chocolate maker in the world?’
‘My dear boy,’ said Grandpa Joe, raising himself up a little higher on his pillow, ‘Mr Willy Wonka is the most amazing, the most fantastic, the most extraordinary chocolate maker the world has ever seen! I thought everybody knew that!’
‘I knew he was famous, Grandpa Joe, and I knew he was very clever . . .’
‘Clever!’ cried the old man. ‘He’s more than that! He’s a magician with chocolate! He can make anything — anything he wants! Isn’t that a fact, my dears?’
The other three old people nodded their heads slowly up and down, and said, ‘Absolutely true. Just as true as can be.’
And Grandpa Joe said, ‘You mean to say I’ve never told you about Mr Willy Wonka and his factory?’