Chapter 4
Ted brought the liquor to his lips, and while his earlier conversation with Violet had made him wary of how much he used alcohol to cope, he had to admit that the warm brown liquid in his glass tasted comforting, a smooth, fiery liquid that numbed the chaotic flow of events which was occurring. Ted sat, slouched out in his armchair, glass in hand, allowing the barrage of talking heads on the television fill the air with platitudes.
Wilkinson had taken a place leaning on the inside of the windowsill, pleasantly engrossed in the same news. However, he kept a running commentary on the unfolding obituary that the channel was performing. He would chuckle at some statements, sigh at others, and roll his eyes at the general sentiment, rolling his scotching in the cheap glass that he had taken from Ted's kitchen. He seemed to be enjoying himself immensely.
"See how his legacy is already being shaped? A benevolent entrepreneur that revolutionized confectionary. A wunderkind inventor without peer. It's almost as if the last forty years never happened, and instead we've been living in some fugue state, one where William could do no wrong." Wilkinson said, and he clucked his tongue in mock-disapproval.
Ted had begun to get over his fear, and his own feelings towards the man had turned to a mild annoyance. Yes, he was polite, and had brought a peace-offering, but he had still broken into his home and was now pestering Ted with the running dialogue that he hadn't made Ted the least bit interested in learning. He decided to try and move along the time he and his guest might share their company by removing some of the stimulus in the room. Ted rose from his seat, moving across the room in a low, sweeping rush, and he turned the knob on his television set, and the screen's light shrunk to the size of a pin-prick. He quickly strode back to the chair in case his guest gained the idea that he was giving it up. He let out another great sigh as he sunk back into the sole cushion of the chair.
"Is the night finally beginning to fatigue you? I'm surprised, considering how late you rose this morning." Wilkinson said with a small smirk, which he washed down with another belt of scotch.
Ted lifted a hand up to his brow in consternation. "You've been spying on me, then."
"For a good period, I have put a surveillance order on you, yes." Wilkinson said, not losing the upturned curl in his lip as he spoke.
"Even at the pub? And I thought Veruca had everything locked down." Ted said, feeling a sluggish despondency begin to pull at him, forcing him to slouch further into his chair.
"Maybe she would have, if her security detail really belonged to her." Wilkinson said. "Ms. Salt has some… Wryness to her, but she acks the experience or the fastidiousness to truly be in control of the situation."
"And that situation would be?" Ted said, beginning to feel further irritated by the opacity of his guest's speech.
"Controlling the legacy of the Late Mr. Wonka's estate. One that is estimated to be worth over Two Billion in assets, worldwide." Mr. Wilkinson took another draught of his scotch, though this time, he seemed to take a smidge less pleasure in his swallow.
The number was unfathomably large to Ted. He recalled hearing on the news that the entire yearly budget of the year was somewhere around Sixty Billion. But that was a State. One of the two largest superpowers in the world. The idea that a business entity, one essentially owned by a single person, could begin to match it fiscally seemed bizarre.
"She wishes to destroy it. So do a few others, but many more wish to preserve it, and to either keep it within their control, or place it into the hands of someone they can control. Wonka's death certainly puts things under some doubt, but he was canny enough to leave his affairs in an order he felt was stable. I should know. I helped him do it." Wilkinson said it in a way that it made his seem like he was supposed to be proud of the last statement, but his face seemed oddly blank.
"So what exactly was your relationship with Wonka then?" Ted asked, trying to focus on his face in the hope it might garner some clue. "Butler? Accountant? If we were going by looks, I'd guess undertaker, but that would make your being here now a fireable offense. Though I guess he's not in a position to do so at the moment."
"Very funny, Mr. Turkentine." Wilkinson said, and Ted almost believed he meant it. "But to answer your question, I was something of a… Facilitator. In the years he fled from the public eye, I performed various services. Security, his liaison to national and international entities, and I even performed some of his more… Undesirable tasks that he required, necessary as they were."
Ted felt wholly mystified by the answer, that said much but contained almost no detail at all. But the underlying insinuation of violence was enlaced in his speech, and Ted decided not to force a direct answer. Wilkinson seemed chatty enough, and it was possible he would reveal specifics the longer he talked.
"And how do I fall into your job description?" Ted asked.
"We'll get to that in time." Wilkinson said, and he again seemed to give a subtle smile as he spoke. "But I first wanted to give you some information that might assist you in the future. Rare information, that I think you might not find in whole from anyone else."
Ted was torn. He genuinely wished he wasn't involved in any of it. The last day-and-a-half had thrown him into a maelstrom of turgid uncertainty. Thoughts of his future were now a bubbling froth of incoherent facts that failed to connect to one another. He felt that learning more would only serve to further drown him in this insanity. However… Perhaps more context might help him figure out where he might be heading, and might give him something to cling to in the future.
"…Say what you have to say, and then I'll have to politely ask you to get the fuck out of my house." Ted said.
Wilkinson gave a genuine laugh then. "Of course, Mr. Turkentine. I would like to leave as swiftly as possible as well. Just because I'm confident no-one is watching or listening now, the certainty I have fades with every minute I'm here." He finished his glass, and strode off across the living room back to the bottle on the kitchen bench, and Ted could see he poured himself another serving that almost went to the brim of his glass.
"I should begin with my own life. A necessary coda to more relevant information." He took another sip of liquor, smacked his lips, and then began again.
"I was born in Poland just after the end of The Great War. Or, the First World War, as they're beginning to call it now. My father had managed to survive his time conscripted to Hungarian forces, and he fought against both the German and Russian armies in several battles. When it became independent following the negotiations at Marseille, he was amongst the first wave of bureaucrats employed by the state. He started in transportation, organising the building of new rails, and then he was later shifted into the department for International Trade, to take advantage of his knowledge of the various routes and the tariffs and laws that they each had individually. In 1926, however, the coup by Pilsudski weakened his position substantially, and he was shuttled into an office in charge of the railyards in Cleszyn. In 1932, when I was 13, my family fled, helped by a generous amount of money that he squirreled away, and we immigrated to England, where they changed their name to Wilkinson."
Ted felt his ears perk up then. Before he had been unable to place Wilkinson's accent. It was a gravelly baritone of warring dialects that were certainly polished, but never seemed to give away a precise origin. Now he could hear the lilt of boarding-school enunciation that structured the loose Slavic and casual American English.
"I entered a finishing school, where I was quickly taught English, and I later went to Cambridge under a scholarship for German Literature. When I graduated in 1940, Poland had fallen to German forces, and Britain was at war with it. I was immediately drafted into intelligence services. Putting my knowledge of German, Ukrainian and Hungarian to the purposes of communications, diplomacy and code-breaking. I was largely a house-bound, though I did a few brief incursions into some of the Baltic ports."
Ted was surprised with the casualness that he spoke about his experiences. He hardly remembered the war, and he was fortunate enough that his family had enough means that they rarely had to ration for anything except some of the more obscure luxuries. But he remembered the reverence and dignity that his family addressed those who fought or served in the war with. Wilkinson's casual attitude towards it made him uncomfortable, as though he was crossing the border into territory that he didn't know anything about.
"I barely recall the war ending. I had been dealing with trying to translate pamphlets for Polish Freedom Fighters in several languages, when I believe I fell asleep at my desk. When I woke up, my colleagues had opened up a few bottles of brandy, and gotten rather drunk. It took almost half an hour to parse that Germany had surrendered, and an hour before I was given a communique with the exact terms. I immediately began writing up a missive with our head office to be on a team that would lobby at any peace-negotiations for the return of Polish territory.
"It wasn't meant to be though. As soon as the Soviets had galumphed through the eastern front, things were always going to be tricky. I was stationed in Vienna when it was carved between the Four Powers. I worked in the British quarter, but I frequently ran operations in the French, US and the Soviet quarters as well. At times, I was even exchanged with American agents for certain missions."
"Whatever happened to Queen and Country…" Ted said.
Wilkinson smiled softly once again. "I know you're above that sentiment, Mr. Turkentine. My loyalty was to my desires. I hoped, even against the considerable odds, that I might go home again, that I might belong to a place wholly once more. That meant a country free of occupation, whether it was German or Soviet. I felt the ends justified the means, to a point.
"Anyway… I worked in Vienna for two years, until I was shifted over to Berlin. By this point, British and American intelligence services were deeply embedded in one another. While the borders had begun to solidify, we knew we weren't supposed to do anything to directly endanger the peace we had spent years accruing… But clandestinely, we fought bitterly, on every level we could, to disrupt the social order in the East, and promote ourselves as heroic harbingers of freedom. Propaganda, in other words.
"I was responsible for translating texts from English into German: pamphlets and chapbooks mostly. One operation we dedicated a lot of attention to was an attempt at leaflet drops from aircraft, but when Soviet forces intercepted the first few, they threatened to blow us out of the sky. So someone in the office got the bright idea of putting them in with aid drops: Some communities were still on rations, and depended on us heavily for them, so we decided to sneak stuff into packaged food. I don't know how many read what we put out, but I know they loved the food and treats we dropped. And especially the candy. That's where Wonka came in."
Wilkinson took a brief pause to rub at his eyes, as though he was trying to wipe away bad memories that clung on to the inside of them. He continued.
"I don't have a firm understanding of his youth, aside from the basics. He was third generation American, from Czech and Irish ancestry. He was awarded a scholarship for chemistry in the Massachusetts institute of Technology in 1936, and he took an interest in the commercial applications of artificial flavourings and preservatives. He was immediately involved with the military in a technical capacity, finding new ways to increase the shelf-life and palatability of rations. His major achievement was a new way of creating chocolate that required a fraction of the cocoa products that was previously needed. Immediately after the way, he transferred to Switzerland. There are some credible rumours that he was apprenticed to a master chocolatier. But who knows what he learnt there, if anything.
"He was brought in to our department a couple of years later. His product was amongst the most superior that many of us had ever tasted. I remember there was some debate between the High office whether it would be a waste to give to civilians. But our office won out, and it was amongst our greatest achievements of propaganda. Children wrote letters directly to the Air Force asking for the next drops from our pilots, and when a box of goodies hit the ground, there were crowds of children ready to meet it. In no small thanks to his chocolate.
"I remember the first time I saw him at our offices. He already had a taste for the whimsical and opulent. While the rest of the office was dressed in plain and cheap clothes, still effected by rationing and overwork, he was in a tailored suit of lime green, with a white silk shirt, silver cufflinks and a monogram on his lapel. He had come in to argue with my superiors; he had made a new admixture of cocoa-solids that was cheaper than his previous invention, and he demanded that we implement it for our deliveries immediately. It meant going over the heads with military suppliers in the United States, but when Wonka told them he would allow them the patents for the new formula, one they could produce themselves in Germany, and grant our department with some extra spending power… They moved rather quickly to capitalise on it. His only stipulation was that he would be the nominative owner, with a five percent of profits.
"That was where his business sprouted from. The returns on it that our office invested in it were worth millions within a decade. And that allowed us not only a source of wealth with which to continue our operations, but also an ability to project our interests in a more legitimate fashion. By the middle of the 1950's, the Berlin branch of Wonka Industries employed over 2000 employees with thousands more benefiting from its effect on the local economy, and we made it a policy that refugees from over the border would be given priority for employment. It worked out fine for Wonka, who got a cheap pool of labour to draw employees from.
"I got my victory in '55, where Austria was given independence. But I still worked my hardest trying to ferret out any agents who might disrupt our position. And meanwhile, as the stasis in the status quo between the Soviets and us was further cemented, I was also forced to work elsewhere outside of Europe. The world appeared to be on the cusp of revolution on every continent. And each new state outside our control was a potential ally to the Soviets. Agents such as myself were shuttled off to every corner of the earth to judge the strength of Soviet forces and influence on different states, and where possible, to disrupt them. I was briefly placed in Indochina to work for French interests, before they lost a grip on everything. However, in 1960 I was shipped up to the Red Corridor in India. Maoists had infiltrated many of the indigenous populations in the area, and since tensions with the British were still high after independence, dual citizens such as myself were highly valued.
"I was stationed in Patna, and would frequently journey out to rural and highly isolated areas to produce field reports on the situation. It was easily the most gruelling and dangerous work I had ever undertaken. I can't count the number of times I was shot at. The number of times I was hurried away from my business because they had caught someone who meant to kill me. It was around… 1962, I think, that I went up near the border to investigate a recently discovered valley, that had a population of Adivasi-" Wilkinson stumbled on his words as Ted gave him a perplexed look at the word he had used. "-The, uh, natives of the area, cut off from the southern population. I was meant to determine if they had had contact with revolutionary forces, or whether they could be used as a counterpoint to their influence in the future.
"They were called the Umpaha Luampa. A population of others, apparently cursed by some divine mandate generations before, to be small of stature yet stout of strength. More likely, their limited diet and genetic pool led to their small size. It was estimated that there was a population of at least a thousand in the valley, cohabiting in a small ring of villages.
"The jungles there were primeval. Amongst the glossy shadows of leaves, you could see the movement of creeping predators that bloated and slinked between the boughs and brush. We lost three guides out of a team of ten on the way there. I was told from Tigers, but I know there were things that lived in those valleys that my guides only spoke about in hushed voices. Things that walked like men, but stalked men as prey. Anyway, eventually we reached the valley.
"When we were there, who should we see there, with a company of mercenaries and a state -of-the-art bivouac at his disposal, but Wonka. He had already been there for weeks."
He took a pause in his story, and took another long drink from his glass, draining it once more, and putting it down on the sill. He opened the window a crack, then pulled a cigarette out from a slim metal case that was hidden in his inner coat pocket, and then pulled a lighter from his trouser pocket. Ted could see that his fingers were trembling and fumbling at what should have been rather simple actions, and that he needed to apply considerable concentration to his actions to make his lighter flip open. Eventually, he got the cigarette to light. After a deep, almost anxious inhalation from his cigarette, he continued, his tone unchanged.
"He had been sent by the Americans, who used the cover from his business to insert him into the situation. The cover story was that he was exploring the darkest veldts and jungles of the world in order to find new, exotic flavours to make candy with. Complete shit that has stuck to the pages of the history annuls to this very day. He didn't remember me at all, of course, but when we arrived, I was sent to his tent, and we immediately began to debrief one another.
"Wonka had not only ascertained that they were untouched by Maoist propaganda, but that he had begun to inform them of the wider world outside of their valley. Of course, he had begun bribing them with food, comfort products, and his raison d'etre, candy. They were only a taste of the wonders of the outside world. Rewards for hard work and sacrifice. By the time I had arrived, they were already zealous opponents of communist ideology.
"I cannot tell you what thoughts lay in his mind then, but I knew his being was pregnant with ambition. He had factories on four continents by then, with the US factory outshining even his first German one, and he seemed only further content to continue expanding and climbing to the top of his market. I don't know why, but he opened up to me during the week we were together out there. He confessed to me, that he had already become wealthier than he could have ever dreamt of in his youth, and now he intended to use his considerable resources to invent things that he had seen in his dreams.
"In an action that surprised me, he offered me a job, to work with him as an assistant. And even more surprisingly, I accepted."
Ted felt the need to interject. "Why? I thought you only wanted to go back home?"
Wilkinson's mouth began to shift and squirm, as if he was silently mumbling an answer to himself before he spoke out loud. Finally, he did answer.
"I had worked for a country that told me it had my interests in mind, and yet hadn't made any progress on the front for a decade and a half. While I understand their wish to preserve a precarious peace, the reality was bitter to accept. And I had spent so many years in different corners of the world, fomenting conflict. The hypocrisy between my motives and actions was not lost on me, but until then, I hadn't considered an alternative beyond it. Wonka gave me that alternative, at least." His tone was heavy with a grief that Ted could parse the smallest depths of.
"I sent in notice, and was quickly granted American citizenship. From that year onwards, I worked to preserve his interests against competitors. To root out corporate spies, help gain information on rivals or potential allies, and to ensure that the business ran smoothly and efficiently while Wonka dove into the depths of his mind, and tried to grasp pearls of inspiration.
Ted sighed, he was interested in what Wilkinson was saying, though that was perhaps only based on echoes of experience that seemed to resonate between his own life and what Wilkinson was saying, but he couldn't deviate from the obvious hyperbole in the Wonka of Wilkinson's description.
"You make it seem like he was some revolutionary thinker. I mean, I'll admit his candies are inspired. But they're still just sweets." Ted tried to muster more reverence for Wonka to the man who knew personally, but couldn't move himself to sound sincere.
Wilkinson gave a deep sigh, and once again, he moved across the room, except this time he moved right up to the chair that Ted was sitting in. For a moment, Ted thought that the tall, gaunt man might try to hit him, but instead, the man knelt down, his joints practically creaking for the effort, and brought up a slender black saddleback that hugged the shadows by the chair so closely that Ted hadn't noticed at all. From it he brought out a slim folio containing a slim collection of manila envelopes, and finally, from an envelope he brought out a stack of papers, which he clung to such a degree that Ted thought his fingertips might pass through the pages entirely.
"You've read the book that the Salt girl wrote, yes?" Wilkinson said, any trace of playfulness or amusement in his voice was replaced with a complete solemnity.
Ted sighed. "Yes." He said simply.
"And your opinion on it? About what happened to those children?" Wilkinson peered at Ted carefully, clearly intent on scrutinising his true beliefs on the matter.
Ted hesitated. He had initially thought it was all a fantasy cooked up by a series of children who were bitter that a child who wasn't their social better had managed to claim Wonka's trust and faith. But later the news interviews with the children, and his meeting with Violet earlier that night, there was clearly more to it all than his initial opinion.
"Some industrial accidents. Violet Beauregard's one seems to have been particularly serious." But even Ted could sense the doubt in his own voice as he said the words.
Wilkinson looked down at him, a look of trepidation on his face, as though his next words might strike him down in an instant. After some moments, Wilkinson closed his eyes, gulped, and began speaking again.
"They were hardly accidents." He said quietly.
Ted wasn't sure how to respond to the statement, so he didn't. The two stewed in the silence of the room before Wilkinson continued.
"Wonka was a talented confectioner. I wouldn't hazard to say he was the best the world had ever seen. But he was a scientist first and foremost. Sweets were a medium. A means to an end. A hobby, even. But his mind… It was the perfect instrument of analysis and creativity. Any discipline he applied himself to, he excelled at. When he heard that Francis Crick had won the Nobel Prize for charting the structure of DNA, Wonka spent half a year studying the latest in genetics to find ways of rewriting it. The factory… If you ever end up seeing it… Is a marvel of experimental engineering, of pneumatics, indoor canal systems, and his experiments with flight…" Wilkinson shook his head, as if banishing a bad dream. "Candy was merely a means of acquiring the funding, materials and support to be able to achieve his vision. Or whatever he decided to set his sights to. What Ms. Salt revealed in her book was just a fraction of what he dabbled with."
Ted's brow furrowed. "If what you're saying is true, that they make sliced bread look like hammered shit, why haven't I heard about any of these things, beyond some cryptic accidents that traumatised some children?"
Wilkinson brushed his comment off with a shrug. "No doubt you have heard of them in some form. Liquid paper, Aspartame… Even just a few years ago and was fussing with his health, he made headway on something called Magnetic resonance imaging that the medical industry have recently found very useful. He usually discreetly sold off research he felt was unproductive. And the rest… It's still secret for a reason." He finally dropped the papers he had been holding into Ted's lap, though from his expression, he seemed uncomfortable being parted from them.
"Part of the reason he made up with the US military after trying to go into business in Europe, was that he came up with a second agreement to give them exclusive access to classified research material. He could tinker with research that overwhelmed their brightest minds, and revive dead paths of research. He became a very valuable asset to them." Ted looked at the papers, and saw a zebra pattern of blacked out lines on documents, all stamped with the word CONFIDENTIAL in a bloody red.
"Of course, no-one else in the international intelligence community liked this exclusive relationship. So, they tried to break him. His early inventions were stolen, and his commercial products split amongst his competitors. I was still learning my way in his organisation, and the various international branches were leakier than a sieve. I was run ragged following him between Here, Britain, South America, Central Asia… And when there wasn't a theft, there were attempts on his life. After a long period of trying to make it work, we admitted the security situation was untenable. It was the main reason we had to move the research back to here in America, and start with a new workforce.
"And we just so happened to have the perfect pool of labour to draw from. The Umpaha Luampa had worked well in securing the passes in Northern border with Bengal, and their worship of Wonka had only grown since he had sent regular care packages filled with luxuries for years. Wonka got his contacts in the military to stir up conflict in the region. Special forces attacks brought the Naxalites over to the Luampa's home territory. Then after a few months, when attrition had worn them down, he offered to relocate the Umpaha Luampas. A majority are housed here, in accommodation inside the factory, but a few hundred were sent to cocoa plantations in Ecuador that were exclusively for Wonka's use… Another gift from his relationship with the military."
Wilkinson tossed another bundle of papers into Ted's lap, which he began to leaf through. This time it wasn't documents, but glossy black and white photographs. On them, the foreground and background were often blurred and out of focus of tree lines, tropical in nature, but Ted saw past the matte haze of foliage to see the shapes of people. They were short, some close enough that Ted would feel confident in saying they had dwarfism, but what was worse wasn't their height, but the condition of their bodies. On their deeply tanned frames he could see the pale marks of old scars and the dark shadows of fresh bruises. Bones jutted from underneath a tight canvas of skin. To Ted, they seemed almost like photographs of walking corpses who had yet to realise their own condition. He felt the hot rush of bile spurt up from the back of his throat, before he quickly swallowed it back down.
"The following years were productive. Profits climbed. He cornered the market domestically until Wonka became synonymous with chocolate and sweets in America. And he came up with the prototypes of some of his most ambitious projects, that were touched upon in Ms. Salt's book: Three-Course Gum, Fizzy Lifting Drink, And Wonkavision. And the military was very, very interested in them."
"In novelty sweets?" Ted said, still clinging to an attitude of incredulousness.
"No. As I said earlier, confectionary was merely a medium to Wonka, but they knew that they could wring the desirable effects from the products that he made. A full course of rations in a single stick of gum. Levitation that could be used for covert operations or evac on a mass scale, and even a way to instantaneously transport goods or people over vast differences… Any one of them would revolutionise the way that warfare would be undertaken. But they needed at least a few preliminary tests before they would accept his research. And after our self-imposed exile, we were short of them."
"What about the… Lumpas?" Ted asked, stumbling over the new words. "Or were you suddenly concerned with their wellbeing?" He ushered to the photos of human misery that lay in his lap.
Wilkinson appeared to brush off his righteous comment without a response. "We could never transport such sensitive inventions internationally. And while the Luampas who lived in the factory were still loyal to Wonka, deliberate acts of experimentation on them might have had… Unfavourable consequences, if they became offended. And we couldn't bring strangers off the street in. The factory was being watched at all times, and we could never be sure that someone mightn't have been planted by an enemy. We had to find a way to bring in a small number of potential test subjects for a field test."
Ted didn't need the rest of it spelt out for him. The Golden Tickets and the sideshow that the hunt for them comprised of. .He felt sick to his stomach with what Wilkinson was insinuating. He felt tempted to stay silent, but he felt the churning need to ask at least a single clarifying question.
"So, you set those children to walk into that factory to test out some bloody mad science? You're lucky none of them got killed by a worse accident than the ones they had."
Wilkinson brought up another cigarette. He seemed to lack the anxiety that he had when he lit up the previous on, and now his face seemed drained of expression, numb from knowledge.
"I told you before," Wilkinson, he said as he drew a short draw through his cigarette. "There weren't accidents during the tour." When Ted opened his mouth to bark a respond, Wilkinson quickly interjected. "Everything went exactly to plan."
Ted's mouth hung open, exposing his overbite and surely making him look gormless. "Well what the fuck is that supposed to mean, exactly?"
Wilkinson tossed the final armful of folders over to Ted, who fumbled them so that they spilt all over his lap, legs and on the floor. Wilkinson didn't bother to help pick them up, instead stalking back over to the kitchen counter and retrieving the bottle of alcohol. This time, any pretence of a glass was forgotten, and he stood, swigging at the bottle between more drags of his cigarette.
"We couldn't exactly leave it all up to chance. Any tenacious government with enough spending power could have seized and searched millions of Wonka Bars for the tickets, and sent in agents to steal or sabotage us. The competition was cover, while we selected applicants that would suit his purposes. I would have preferred to not have to use children, nor would I have chosen all those who were selected, had I known what would befall them. But that was Wonka's choice."
Ted couldn't help but think back to his meeting earlier in the night, and the genuine pain that both of the girls seemed to express. There was only one question he could ask think to ask that could help him to understand.
"Why? Why them?"
Wilkinson brought the bottle back up to his lips, and then he looked down at Ted's glass, and tilted the bottle down to top it off. Once he had finished, he gestured towards the files that had been clumsily reassembled by Ted.
"Wonka… He hated people. He despised women, and he was in secret competition with every man he met. His business relationships far outlasted his personal ones, and even they could sour in seconds on a bad day. But… He loved to hate. But as a vice, it was irresistible to him. Each grudge animated him, and each slight he received powered his personal resolve to return it tenfold.
"When we began to plan the competition, he already had several names in mind. Gloop, Salt, Beauregard and Teevee."
Ted felt as though a lead weight were passing through his core. The information was heavy. More than heavy, he felt the twinge of absolute, moral wrongness of the information, that somehow eclipsed the horror he had felt from seeing the photos of brutalised strangers he had minutes before.
"He had his reasons, not that he told me them. From what I pieced together afterwards; they were chosen because of grudges that were nursed from years before. Gloop had been a junior administrator in the German branch of Wonka's company, that he was sure had relationships with the intelligence community that gave information to his competitors. Beauregard and Teevee were relatives, younger siblings of military personnel who had tried to snub the initial change in Wonka's product, and forced him to deal with us after the war. And Salt… He had major business contract with several other European confectioners, but had disregarded early attempts of a deal with Wonka. They all had children of an appropriate age as well."
Ted looked through the pages in front of him. He saw several tax and business receipts that he could barely begin to parse, apart for the names 'Gloop' and 'Salt'. There were some were black and white pictures of black suited men standing sternly for the cameraman. Others were colour photographs of happy families that he had the dimmest amount of recognition of smiling. Baby pictures, School reports, dental records…
Ted stood up suddenly, and his head began to swim from the sudden movement, and the drink that he had been downing for an hour. But it was out of a frantic need to know what might be the most important question he felt he'd ever asked.
"And Charlie Bucket? Why did he pick Charlie?!" Ted practically shouted to the rake-thin man only a few steps away.
Wilkinson looked at him for a moment, seeming to gauge Ted's frame-of-mind. Whatever decision he came up with was swiftly decided without fuss, as he responded, his tone of voice barely shifting from a monotone aside with a tinge of discomfort.
"I believe Wonka, whatever his feelings of revenge, had also begun to consider his own mortality. We were getting to an age where we were slowing down physically, where he couldn't spend a week at research without proper sleep and food without having an effect on him, and I couldn't be on a plane to, say, Buenos Aires and back in a day without having to have a rest... He began experimenting on an anti-aging formula and other hair-brained schemes to turn back the clock… Young blood needed to brought in.
"Bucket had certain… Qualities, that Wonka desired in someone who he wanted in someone who could cement his legacy. Bright, but not arrogantly so. No father in the picture, so Wonka could take on that role without difficulty. A background of crushing poverty, so he would never be able to refuse Wonka outright without fear of being left destitute. He was also quite naïve, despite the misfortunes he experienced in his short life, preferring to act with honourable conduct over self-interest, something Wonka could manipulate into an enduring loyalty."
Ted turned away from Wilkinson. He was talking about a child as if he was an object, a simple machine that required a few presses of a button to perform the perfect task. While he was a teacher, and he sometimes fantasised about being able to have a class of well-behaved children who wouldn't fart around or give him backchat, there was a fundamental difference between reprimanding a child and giving detention for bad behaviour, and the sickeningly cold manipulation that was being discussed.
And the fact that he knew Charlie only made it worse.
Ted walked over to the kitchen counter, placing the papers there, trying to distance himself from the new, distasteful information. Then he walked over to the sink, and poured away the generous amount of remaining scotch in his glass. It was worse than poison, poison would've at least felt like honest fare listening to the horrendous things he had already that night.
"I know what you must think of me." Wilkinson said behind him, still standing at the same spot he had before.
"You have no way of knowing how I feel." Ted said, seething. "It's clear you don't have a shred of humanity in your body."
"A not inaccurate assessment to take, from what I've told you." Wilkinson said, his voice becoming suddenly quieter. "I have had… The luxury, if you would call it that, in the past of being able to take a degree of distance from my actions. Perhaps it was from coming into my occupation so young in life, but I never particularly concerned myself with how individuals might suffer from my own actions. It's no excuse, of course, but it's the truth.
"Charlie Bucket…I spent more time with the child than I imagined I would. Wonka was too selfish to be an effective role-model, and frequently trapped in his research and the satisfaction of making his whimsy come to life, over anything so mundane as human feeling. I often had to take the time to instruct him on the more mundane avenues of the business with the boy. I saw his brightness, his kindness and his vulnerability. He reminded me much of what I was when I was his age, before we moved and I was forced to… become something I wasn't."
Ted listened, and the man's reasons were uncomfortably affective to him. And he turned to see Wilkinson have a seemingly genuine pained expression as he spoke.
"I don't think he ever felt the same sort of fondness for me. Charlie has never fully trusted me, and perhaps outside of some specific occasions, even liked me, I feel. It likely comes from the fact that when I met him initially, it was under the guise of someone else due to Wonka's plotting, as well as ongoing influence while he was with Wonka. I don't see it as a coincidence that as soon as I began spending more time with Charlie, my duties became far more… mundane. I think I was almost relieved that I was finally being left out of Wonka's confidence…
"But what I saw that boy was forced to go through…" Ted saw something he never thought he would from the gaunt, grim man in his living room a little more than an hour before: a shudder.
"I suggested to Wonka that he marry the boy's mother, to solidify the relationship between the Charlie and him. Instead, he hired her to run his European assets. She hasn't seen him in 3 years. And his Grandparents… They might've been frail, and existed in deplorable for years, but all of them dying months within one another… Georgina, George, Josephine, and finally, Joseph…The whole thing had the stink of Wonka' schemes all over it. Just another way to make Charlie turn further to Wonka after they were out of the picture.
"I like to think I did what I could. Took Charlie away to other duties when I could. Gave him as many small kindnesses as I could that Wonka wouldn't perceive as a threat… But fear my efforts were in vain. The boy I see now… Isn't the boy who came in. I see Wonka in him. Far too much.
The man sank into silence, and after he stopped speaking, he settled into the chair that Ted had left absent, sinking deep into their cushions, the man's posture almost seeming to melt into a languid pool.
"Well, now that Wonka's gone, surely you can do something." Ted said in response to the black silence emanating from Wilkinson. He himself wasn't sure what that "something" was, or whether it was little more than a platitude.
"Wonka was diagnosed with terminal cancer five months ago, and the longest conversation we had in that time was about new housing arrangements for the Luampa." Wilkinson said with a cringe of indignity. "He was in a coma for the last two weeks, and I wasn't allowed to see him. Charlie's orders. I've always known that my position was always unstable, and Wonka's death has only proven I was correct. Charlie's mother is coming back to serve out her last few months as his legal guardian, and she was never an ally of mine. No, now that Wonka's deceased, I doubt I'll even be allowed back into the factory. That's why I came here."
There it was. Their entire conversation had been half of the answer to the question that Ted had asked him when he found him in his home. But still not the half that Ted wanted answered.
"To admit how guilty you are, and how you wish you could've been better if you'd only known?" Ted spat the words across the room. "I'm not a priest. I don't take confessions."
Wilkinson stared at him hard.
"I came to give you the wisdom that's come from my own failures. To tally the worst sins that I've been party to so that you don't fall into them. Whether you like it or not, Charlie will call on you. To work with and under him, and to guide him. You have the chance to influence him to make better choices. Ones I couldn't steer him to while Wonka was alive."
"I don't know where everyone's getting the idea that Charlie wants anything to do with me!" Ted waved his hands in the air in exasperation. "Veruca seemed to be under the assumption that he has some inordinate fondness for me, and I can't for the life of me see how!"
"From me, of course. You should hear Charlie go on about how much he respects you. It's quite endearing." Wilkinson said, betraying a tiny smile.
"From—" Ted began, but his mind seemed to jam at the couple of words, and his mouth went slack as he stared at Wilkinson for an explanation.
"She's been taking information from me for some years. She doesn't know who I am, of course, she thinks I'm Arthur Slugworth. A deception made possible by a passable resemblance and her own lack of attention to detail… I've also steered her towards other agents in our factory. One who found written evidence that Charlie intends to hire you. He should make contact with you in time, if you wish to take Charlie's offer."
Ted stared at the floor.
"I don't." He said.
For some moments, they stayed in silence once more, before Wilkinson brought up another cigarette and lit it. Ted was annoyed that his moment of stoicism was being taken so lightly, and began to speak.
"Maybe when I was younger, I had… delusions of working with, well, all that… But I know what I am, now. I've accepted that I'm a glorified child-minder. And I don't want to be anything else."
Another expression flashed across Wilkinson's face that Ted hadn't expected: annoyance.
"Have you thought, perhaps, that this isn't about you at all? That your wants or dreams don't figure into this?"
Ted wanted to respond with a hail of invectives, but the weight of the words seemed to delay his anger before he could leverage a response.
"I was born to be a pawn in endless struggles between great nations and ideologies. I lost my home and my innocence before I even understood what they were. But I didn't have the luxury of escaping from it all by saying I didn't want any part in it. That isn't how the world works. You still need to find your place in it all. And find some position where your actions can make the difference. We all choose a side depending on all of that. I… regret mine, now." Wilkinson gave Ted a noticeable cringe as he said that. "Don't be like me. Act in the way that you best can, while you still have the chance."
With that word, he took a final swig from the bottle placing it down on the windowsill, and butted his final cigarette. He picked up his bag, and some of the papers that Ted had left by the chair, and walked over to the kitchen counter, where he picked up the rest that Ted had been reading.
"You're not going to let me keep those?" Ted inquired.
"Why? Would you know what to do with them?" Wilkinson asked him, before quickly flipping through each document. "They would only be a dangerous liability for you. Besides, I need them."
"What for?" Ted asked.
"I told you before, there are many parties who would want even a morsel of the information that I've shared with you. I have copies sequestered elsewhere, but I have no guarantee that if I walk out this door that I won't need it on hand."
Ted was conflicted. Wilkinson seemed to be leaving, which was good, but he had continued to stir up an already messy night, and placed even more doubts about his position on Wonka and Charlie Bucket than Ted could have ever imagined. He wanted more. Needed more. Before he felt he could make the right choice.
"Look, is there someone else I can talk to? To… Confirm things." Ted asked.
Wilkinson gave a frightening laugh. And began to lock the buckles of the satchel. At first Ted thought that he wasn't going to do anything more, but the gaunt man slipped a pen from his breast, and found a shopping receipt, which he quickly began to scribble on.
"Many of the people I used are dead. But there is one who is still around. He helped in orchestrating Charlie's finding of the ticket. He may be… reluctant to share, but if you tell him you know about the deal that he and 'Mr. D' made and now that Wonka is dead, you'll need to renegotiate it. He should be more ready to open up after that." He put his pen away and waved the piece of paper in his hand.
"Take in everything written down here and then burn it, or else you might end up costing lives." And he dropped the slip of paper down onto the counter, and made his way towards the door.
Ted blinked. There was still more that he wanted, that he needed, to ask. But the residue of the drink and the already turbulent events of the night meant that his mind couldn't come up with anything useful. He began talking without knowing what he was going to say, hoping to grab the man's attention a final time.
"Are- Are you- That is to say- Am I… Going to see you again?"
Wilkinson opened the door, but turned to answer before he left the doorway.
"I very much doubt it, Mr. Turkentine. Not unless you intend to go to Austria. And even then… Well, anything can happen between here and there. Goodbye. I wish you the best, whatever actions you end up taking." And with those words, he pulled the handle, closing the door, and finally leaving Ted alone.
Ted stood there, bewildered by the events of the night. He had little energy for planning, or even thinking of what the next day would bring, but he still had the wherewithal to tidy up a little.
He scooped up the butts and ashes from his guest's smoking, and clapped his hands of them into the bin, before returning to the windowsill to deal with the bottle. He picked it up and found it was still surprisingly full. There was at least a third of the bottle left in there.
He considered drinking some more. It was a smooth drop, and there was no lid that he could find. It would only be a waste otherwise. But his mind flashed back to Violet, downing drinks at the table. And Wilkinson swigging directly from the bottle as he laid out the horrors that he had helped commit.
Ted brought the scotch over to the kitchen sink, where his glass was.
And there, he preceded to pour the rest of the bottle down the drain.