Mrs Bucket smiled at the old man, then she turned to her husband and said,
'How about you, dear? Don't you think you ought to go?'
'Well . . .' Mr Bucket said, pausing to think about it, 'no . . . I'm not so sure that I
should.'
'But you must.'
'There's no must about it, my dear,' Mr Bucket said gently. 'Mind you, I'd love to
go. It'll be tremendously exciting. But on the other hand . . . I believe that the person
who really deserves to go most of all is Grandpa Joe himself. He seems to know more
about it than we do. Provided, of course, that he feels well enough . . .'
'Yippeeeeee!' shouted Grandpa Joe, seizing Charlie by the hands and dancing
round the room.
'He certainly seems well enough,' Mrs Bucket said, laughing. 'Yes . . . perhaps
you're right after all. Perhaps Grandpa Joe should be the one to go with him. I
certainly can't go myself and leave the other three old people all alone in bed for a
whole day.'
'Hallelujah!' yelled Grandpa Joe. 'Praise the Lord!'
At that point, there came a loud knock on the front door. Mr Bucket went to open
it, and the next moment, swarms of newspapermen and photographers were
pouring into the house. They had tracked down the finder of the fifth Golden Ticket,
and now they all wanted to get the full story for the front pages of the morning
papers. For several hours, there was complete pandemonium in the little house, and
it must have been nearly midnight before Mr Bucket was able to get rid of them so
that Charlie could go to bed.
13 The Big Day Arrives
The sun was shining brightly on the morning of the big day, but the ground was
still white with snow and the air was very cold.
Outside the gates of Wonka's factory, enormous crowds of people had gathered
to watch the five lucky ticket holders going in. The excitement was tremendous. It
was just before ten o'clock. The crowds were pushing and shouting, and policemen
with arms linked were trying to hold them back from the gates.
Right beside the gates, in a small group that was carefully shielded from the
crowds by the police, stood the five famous children, together with the grown-ups
who had come with them.
The tall bony figure of Grandpa Joe could be seen standing quietly among them,
and beside him, holding tightly on to his hand, was little Charlie Bucket himself.
All the children, except Charlie, had both their mothers and fathers with them,
and it was a good thing that they had, otherwise the whole party might have got out
of hand. They were so eager to get going that their parents were having to hold them
back by force to prevent them from climbing over the gates. 'Be patient!' cried the
fathers. 'Be still! It's not time yet! It's not ten o'clock!'
Behind him, Charlie Bucket could hear the shouts of the people in the crowd as
they pushed and fought to get a glimpse of the famous children.
'There's Violet Beauregarde!' he heard someone shouting. 'That's her all right! I
can remember her face from the newspapers!'
'And you know what?' somebody else shouted back. 'She's still chewing that
dreadful old piece of gum she's had for three months! You look at her jaws! They're
still working on it!'
'Who's the big fat boy?'
'That's Augustus Gloop!'
'So it is!'
'Enormous, isn't he!'
'Fantastic!'
'Who's the kid with a picture of The Lone Ranger stencilled on his windcheater?'
'That's Mike Teavee! He's the television fiend!'
'He must be crazy! Look at all those toy pistols he's got hanging all over him!'
'The one I want to see is Veruca Salt!' shouted another voice in the crowd. 'She's
the girl whose father bought up half a million chocolate bars and then made the
workers in his peanut factory unwrap every one of them until they found a Golden
Ticket! He gives her anything she wants! Absolutely anything! She only has to start
screaming for it and she gets it!'
'Dreadful, isn't it?'
'Shocking, I call it!'
'Which do you think is her?'
'That one! Over there on the left! The little girl in the silver mink coat!'
'Which one is Charlie Bucket?'
'Charlie Bucket? He must be that skinny little shrimp standing beside the old
fellow who looks like a skeleton. Very close to us. Just there! See him?'
'Why hasn't he got a coat on in this cold weather?'
'Don't ask me. Maybe he can't afford to buy one.'
'Goodness me! He must be freezing!'
Charlie, standing only a few paces away from the speaker, gave Grandpa Joe's
hand a squeeze, and the old man looked down at Charlie and smiled.
Somewhere in the distance, a church clock began striking ten.
Very slowly, with a loud creaking of rusty hinges, the great iron gates of the
factory began to swing open.
The crowd became suddenly silent. The children stopped jumping about. All
eyes were fixed upon the gates.
'There he is!' somebody shouted, 'That's him!'
And so it was!
14 Mr Willy Wonka
Mr Wonka was standing all alone just inside the open gates of the factory.
And what an extraordinary little man he was!
He had a black top hat on his head.
He wore a tail coat made of a beautiful plum-coloured velvet.