‘Oh, yes!’ said Grandpa Joe. ‘I mean NO! What am I saying? She’s a howling baby!’
‘But in perfect health,’ said Mr Wonka. ‘May I ask you, sir, how many pills she took?’
‘Four,’ said Grandpa Joe glumly. ‘They all took four.’
Mr Wonka made a wheezing noise in his throat and a look of great sorrow came over his face. ‘Why oh why can’t people be more sensible?’ he said sadly. ‘Why don’t they listen to me when I tell them something? I explained very carefully beforehand that each pill makes the taker exactly twenty years younger. So if Grandma Josephine took four of them, she automatically became younger by four times twenty, which is . . . wait a minute now . . . four twos are eight . . . add a nought . . . that’s eighty . . . so she automatically became younger by eighty years. How old, sir, was your wife, if I may ask, before this happened?’
‘She was eighty last birthday,’ Grandpa Joe answered. ‘She was eighty and three months.’
‘There you are, then!’ cried Mr Wonka, flashing a happy smile. ‘The Wonka-Vite worked perfectly! She is now precisely three months old! And a plumper rosier infant I’ve never set eyes on!’
‘Nor me,’ said Mr Bucket. ‘She’d win a prize in any baby competition.’
‘First prize,’ said Mr Wonka.
‘Cheer up, Grandpa,’ said Charlie, taking the old man’s hand in his. ‘Don’t be sad. She’s a beautiful baby.’
‘Madam,’ said Mr Wonka, turning to Mrs Bucket. ‘How old, may I ask, was Grandpa George, your father?’
‘Eighty-one,’ wailed Mrs Bucket. ‘He was eighty-one exactly.’
‘Which makes him a great big bouncing one-year-old boy now,’ said Mr Wonka happily.
‘How splendid!’ said Mr Bucket to his wife. ‘You’ll be the first person in the world to change her father’s nappies!’
‘He can change his own rotten nappies!’ said Mrs Bucket. ‘What I want to know is where’s my mother? Where’s Grandma Georgina?’
‘Ah-ha,’ said Mr Wonka. ‘Oh-ho . . . Yes, indeed . . . Where oh where has Georgina gone? How old, please, was the lady in question?’
‘Seventy-eight,’ Mrs Bucket told him.
‘Well, of course!’ laughed Mr Wonka. ‘That explains it!’
‘What explains what?’ snapped Mrs Bucket.
‘My dear madam,’ said Mr Wonka. ‘If she was only seventy-eight and she took enough Wonka-Vite to make her eighty years younger, then naturally she’s vanished. She’s bitten off more than she could chew! She’s taken off more years than she had!’
‘Explain yourself,’ said Mrs Bucket.
‘Simple arithmetic,’ said Mr Wonka. ‘Subtract eighty from seventy-eight and what do you get?’
‘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.
‘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?