‘When it was all finished, Mr Wonka said to Prince Pondicherry, “I warn you, though, it won’t last very long, so you’d better start eating it right away.”
‘”Nonsense!” shouted the Prince. “I’m not going to eat my palace! I’m not even going to nibble the staircase or lick the walls! I’m going to live in it!”
‘But Mr Wonka was right, of course, because soon after this, there came a very hot day with a boiling sun, and the whole palace began to melt, and then it sank slowly to the ground, and the crazy prince, who was dozing in the living room at the time, woke up to find himself swimming around in a huge brown sticky lake of chocolate.’
Little Charlie sat very still on the edge of the bed, staring at his grandfather. Charlie’s face was bright, and his eyes were stretched so wide you could see the whites all around. ‘Is all this really true?’ he asked. ‘Or are you pulling my leg?’
‘It’s true!’ cried all four of the old people at once. ‘Of course it’s true! Ask anyone you like!’
‘And I’ll tell you something else that’s true,’ said Grandpa Joe, and now he leaned closer to Charlie, and lowered his voice to a soft, secret whisper. ‘Nobody . . . ever . . . comes . . . out!’
‘Out of where?’ asked Charlie.
‘And . . . nobody . . . ever . . . goes . . . in!’
‘In where?’ cried Charlie.
‘Wonka’s factory, of course!’
‘Grandpa, what do you mean?’
‘I mean workers, Charlie.’
‘Workers?’
‘All factories,’ said Grandpa Joe, ‘have workers streaming in and out of the gates in the mornings and evenings — except Wonka’s! Have you ever seen a single person going into that place — or coming out?’
Little Charlie looked slowly around at each of the four old faces, one after the other, and they all looked back at him. They were friendly smiling faces, but they were also quite serious. There was no sign of joking or leg-pulling on any of them.
‘Well? Have you?’ asked Grandpa Joe.
‘I . . . I really don’t know, Grandpa,’ Charlie stammered. ‘Whenever I walk past the factory, the gates seem to be closed.’
‘Exactly!’ said Grandpa Joe.
‘But there must be people working there . . .’
‘Not people, Charlie. Not ordinary people, anyway.’
‘Then who?’ cried Charlie.
‘Ah-ha . . . That’s it, you see . . . That’s another of Mr Willy Wonka’s clevernesses.’
‘Charlie, dear,’ Mrs Bucket called out from where she was standing by the door, ‘it’s time for bed. That’s enough for tonight.’
‘But, Mother, I must hear . . .’
‘Tomorrow, my darling . . .’
‘That’s right,’ said Grandpa Joe, ‘I’ll tell you the rest of it tomorrow evening.’
4
The Secret Workers
The next evening, Grandpa Joe went on with his story.
‘You see, Charlie,’ he said, ‘not so very long ago there used to be thousands of people working in Mr Willy Wonka’s factory. Then one day, all of a sudden, Mr Wonka had to ask every single one of them to leave, to go home, never to come back.’
‘But why?’ asked Charlie.
‘Because of spies.’
‘Spies?’
‘Yes. All the other chocolate makers, you see, had begun to grow jealous of the wonderful sweets that Mr Wonka was making, and they started sending in spies to steal his secret recipes. The spies took jobs in the Wonka factory, pretending that they were ordinary workers, and while they were there, each one of them found out exactly how a certain special thing was made.’
‘And did they go back to their own factories and tell?’ asked Charlie.
‘They must have,’ answered Grandpa Joe, ‘because soon after that, Fickelgruber’s factory started making an ice cream that would never melt, even in the hottest sun. Then Mr Prodnose’s factory came out with a chewing-gum that never lost its flavour however much you chewed it. And then Mr Slugworth’s factory began making sugar balloons that you could blow up to huge sizes before you popped them with a pin and gobbled them up. And so on, and so on. And Mr Willy Wonka tore his beard and shouted, “This is terrible! I shall be ruined! There are spies everywhere! I shall have to close the factory!”‘