Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Charlie Bucket Series)

19

The Inventing Room – Everlasting Gobstoppers and Hair Toffee

When Mr Wonka shouted ‘Stop the boat!’ the Oompa-Loompas jammed their oars into the river and backed water furiously. The boat stopped.

The Oompa-Loompas guided the boat alongside the red door. On the door it said, INVENTING ROOM – PRIVATE – KEEP OUT. Mr Wonka took a key from his pocket, leaned over the side of the boat, and put the key in the keyhole.

‘This is the most important room in the entire factory!’ he said. ‘All my most secret new inventions are cooking and simmering in here! Old Fickelgruber would give his front teeth to be allowed inside just for three minutes! So would Prodnose and Slugworth and all the other rotten chocolate makers! But now, listen to me! I want no messing about when you go in! No touching, no meddling, and no tasting! Is that agreed?’

‘Yes, yes!’ the children cried. ‘We won’t touch a thing!’

‘Up to now,’ Mr Wonka said, ‘nobody else, not even an Oompa-Loompa, has ever been allowed in here!’ He opened the door and stepped out of the boat into the room. The four children and their parents all scrambled after him.

‘Don’t touch!’ shouted Mr Wonka. ‘And don’t knock anything over!’

Charlie Bucket stared around the gigantic room in which he now found himself. The place was like a witch’s kitchen! All about him black metal pots were boiling and bubbling on huge stoves, and kettles were hissing and pans were sizzling, and strange iron machines were clanking and spluttering, and there were pipes running all over the ceiling and walls, and the whole place was filled with smoke and steam and delicious rich smells.

Mr Wonka himself had suddenly become even more excited than usual, and anyone could see that this was the room he loved best of all. He was hopping about among the saucepans and the machines like a child among his Christmas presents, not knowing which thing to look at first. He lifted the lid from a huge pot and took a sniff; then he rushed over and dipped a finger into a barrel of sticky yellow stuff and had a taste; then he skipped across to one of the machines and turned half a dozen knobs this way and that; then he peered anxiously through the glass door of a gigantic oven, rubbing his hands and cackling with delight at what he saw inside. Then he ran over to another machine, a small shiny affair that kept going phut-phut-phut-phut-phut, and every time it went phut, a large green marble dropped out of it into a basket on the floor. At least it looked like a marble.

‘Everlasting Gobstoppers!’ cried Mr Wonka proudly. ‘They’re completely new! I am inventing them for children who are given very little pocket money. You can put an Everlasting Gobstopper in your mouth and you can suck it and suck it and suck it and suck it and it will never get any smaller!’

‘It’s like gum!’ cried Violet Beauregarde.

‘It is not like gum,’ Mr Wonka said. ‘Gum is for chewing, and if you tried chewing one of these Gobstoppers here you’d break your teeth off! And they never get any smaller! They never disappear! NEVER! At least I don’t think they do. There’s one of them being tested this very moment in the Testing Room next door. An Oompa-Loompa is sucking it. He’s been sucking it for very nearly a year now without stopping, and it’s still just as good as ever!

‘Now, over here,’ Mr Wonka went on, skipping excitedly across the room to the opposite wall, ‘over here I am inventing a completely new line in toffees!’ He stopped beside a large saucepan. The saucepan was full of a thick gooey purplish treacle, boiling and bubbling. By standing on his toes, little Charlie could just see inside it.

‘That’s Hair Toffee!’ cried Mr Wonka. ‘You eat just one tiny bit of that, and in exactly half an hour a brand-new luscious thick silky beautiful crop of hair will start growing out all over the top of your head! And a moustache! And a beard!’

‘A beard!’ cried Veruca Salt. ‘Who wants a beard, for heaven’s sake?’

‘It would suit you very well,’ said Mr Wonka, ‘but unfortunately the mixture is not quite right yet. I’ve got it too strong. It works too well. I tried it on an Oompa-Loompa yesterday in the Testing Room and immediately a huge black beard started shooting out of his chin, and the beard grew so fast that soon it was trailing all over the floor in a thick hairy carpet. It was growing faster than we could cut it! In the end we had to use a lawn mower to keep it in check! But I’ll get the mixture right soon! And when I do, then there’ll be no excuse any more for little boys and girls going about with bald heads!’

‘But Mr Wonka,’ said Mike Teavee, ‘little boys and girls never do go about with …’

‘Don’t argue, my dear child, please don’t argue!’ cried Mr Wonka. ‘It’s such a waste of precious time! Now, over here, if you will all step this way, I will show you something that I am terrifically proud of. Oh, do be careful! Don’t knock anything over! Stand back!’