'T'. This story is rated 'T'.
Silence filled the back room, George remembering what he could about the man he now knew to be Willy's father. Officious he had been when he had entered the shop; imperious and haughty, only to have that smooth, hard exterior cracked by pain, extreme pain, fissure upon fissure of spidery lines in his marble façade revealing themselves as he collapsed. There had been an emotion in Dr. Wonka's cold eyes, a fleeting emotion, overtaken, engulfed by the pain, that George had been unable to place at the time. He thought he might know now what it was: surprise. Surprise that the façade had cracked; surprised that pain had managed it; surprised that anything organic had that clout, and that didn't bode well for emotions. George shook his head sadly; it didn't bode well for Love.
Lifting his hand, so much lighter than his heart at this moment, he cradled Georgina's in his, and wrapping gentle fingers around her palm, gave her the kiss of a squeeze.
"Was there ever a day, my love, however awful our circumstances may have been, when you wondered if I loved you?"
Her eyes shining with moisture, shaking her head, Georgina squeezed back. "Grapes, Grape. I love grapes, every day!"
George's smile was wry: only Georgina!
"Then between you, and me, and this table top, I don't think Willy Wonka can say the same about him and his father."
Georgina, not wanting words to give form to such an awful circumstance, let known her agreement with her moist eyes alone. George, understanding, let go her hand and rose to his feet.
"Then I'll answer your question, my dearest, and the answer is 'no'. Willy does not know he has a haven here. But we'll show him that he does, yer darn tootin', if it's the last thing we do!"
Feeling privileged in more ways than one, Georgina rose to join her husband as he made his way back to the shop's retail side. It was nice of Willy to have told them one of his secrets.
It was nice. Leaving, his foot falling on the shop's worn outer step as the door banged closed, it was nice Willy found he was feeling. There was a warmth growing around his heart that shouldn't be there—there wasn't any candy making going on; no recipe whose secret was about to reveal itself; no unknown flavor about to be known—but, Willy saw no reason to diss this development. The sound of the door meeting its jamb; the click of the latch finding its home: they were familiar, and nice. This shop was becoming familiar, and that was nice. This was the shop where he had met Charlie, and that was nice. The Grands had been given a choice, yet again, and they'd chosen to stick, yet again, and that was nice. How many times is the charm? Willy was starting to believe them.
Willy's shoes met the sidewalk, and he was on his way home. That was nice. He'd told Terence about the tour in this shop he was leaving behind, and that was nice. Sharing that trauma had been nice. Willy turned up the hill. It would be nice if Terence were here, to take care of the out-of-Factory Charlie chores—Willy had planned on that—but it was nice that Terence had returned at all, and it was nice that he had thought that he would return this time. Terence didn't know himself very well, Willy sighed to himself, his walking-stick tapping out time, and I should have known him better. It was to be him, but if not him it has to be me: people like the Buckets couldn't fathom a man like Dede—Dede would eat them for lunch, or breakfast, or dinner, or for a snack—and the less the Buckets knew that, the better. Smiling its simple smile, the face of the Square-Candy-That-Looked-Round bubbled up in his mind, and Willy felt sorry now that he had eaten it. The world was not simple, and it needed all the simple things in it it could get.
The Greasystone Grillers chose that moment to assail Willy's nostrils, and that was not nice. Rancid fat: yuck! Who did they think they were kidding, calling it the Greystone Cafe? The Factory was yards ahead, so close now, with, thank Heaven, phew press: none, in fact, and that was nice. Phew!
Willy reached the street, and checking the traffic, crossed. On a slight diagonal for the gate on the left, he amended course when he saw the great central gates begin to move. The Oompa-Loompas must be missing him to go that route, and that was nice. He sped up to get through the gates before they opened much more, but he needn't have worried: with the opening sufficient for him to slip through, they stopped.
If the gate's movement drew attention, Willy's hurry attracted more. A figure loitering between cars peeled himself from the bumper he was lounging against, and closed in. "Hey!" he yelled, his words drowned out by the rumble of a passing lorry. "You!"
Unhearing, Willy was through the opening. The figure following broke into a stumbling run. Willy, oblivious to the action behind him, carried on. The gates closed on the would-be intruder's face. "Show off!" he yelled.
Barely through, Willy froze, any warmth he'd been feeling turning to ice. The words came from the bars behind him, filled with disgust, edged with hatred, and seasoned with spit. Dreaded but expected, it was his dear, dear Pater, coming to haunt him like the phantom he'd soon be. With his heart first almost stopping, and then racing madly, his breathing choked, Willy, near paralyzed, but refusing to give in, slowly rose on the balls of his feet, pivoting to face his tormentor. Sinking back down, the fingers curled around his walking-stick had gone numb, his shoulders so tensed they constricted the blood supply to his limbs. His eyes closed, the better not to see the Pater, Willy held his breath. Dede at the Factory was a sight Willy had never expected to see, and he was pretty sure he didn't want to see it now.
"You worthless piece of—"
Again! But this voice wasn't that voice! Willy's eyes snapped open, his shoulders dropping from around his ears to their more normal location. This voice was that other voice, that late-night voice, speaking to Terence, from a cold, cold bench across the street! Willy's lips broke into a smile, and then a grin. This was the Blob! How wonderful! How nice!
"Tut, tut, Blobby, dear! We'll have no bad language here."
"—sheep shit!"
"You shouldn't talk about yourself that way; you can't help the way you are."
"No, I mean you!" said The Blob, one fist gripping the bars, his shoulder pinned against the barrier so that his other arm could find its way through the only gap that would allow it, reaching out to grab the hated Wonka. The hated Wonka was out of reach, but only just. Thwarted, Felix stamped the cobbles, and then he pulled back, lest he become of interest to passersby.
That had to hurt, thought Willy: the foot stamping … not the comment. They'd been speaking over each other, causing Felix's vein-popping frustration, but there was silence now. The words hung in the air, fading. Willy, waiting until they had finished falling to the cobbles, studied the creature before him: the nondescript clothes; the ratty trainers, the stringy blond hair. "Aww, I'm crushed," said he, looking anything but. "But I'm gonna ask you, do you ever wash your hair? Cuz if ya ever did, I've got some hair cream—"
"I don't care about your hair cream!"
"Ha! Fell for it! I don't care about you! Ta!" His eye on the few forming up behind The Blob to get in on whatever this was, Willy turned, the audience over, and making a decidedly annoying flourish with his walking-stick, began a sashay towards the steps.
Felix shook the bars, his mission as unfinished as it was un-started. "Wait!"
"Wait for what?" asked a woman at his shoulder. "What's going on here?"
Yeah, wait for what? Though Willy thought he knew. His back to The Blob, he halted.
"None of your business, buttinsky, so fuck off!"
Eww! Willy's fingers found his ears.
"Well, I—"
"I said, fuck off, lady! This doesn't concern you!" The spit in his growl, his menacing arms, and the lunging pivots Felix threw in convinced the few who had gathered to hurry on, some of them thinking about circling back with reinforcements. That had to be Willy Wonka on the other side of that gate. Who else could it be?
"That won't last for long," laughed Willy, turning and taking his fingers out of his ears. "Ya better say what ya came to say."
"Your father wants you to come and see him. He says you must! He says you'll be in big trouble if you don't. He has something he wants to tell you…" Felix licked his lips. Wonka was listening, but deadpan. "He has something he wants to show you." Felix spoke the last in a rush, as if speed would make a difference, or an impression.
Show me? Really? You don't say. Has he told you what that might be? Or shown you? Cuz, I'm guessing no. Felix didn't answer, but Willy didn't expect him to: Willy hadn't asked the questions aloud. He could hear The Blob panting as he hung on the bars, his ungloved hands, no doubt, fast losing their feeling on the cold steel. Aren't gloves wonderful? Aren't they nice? What has happening Blob-wise didn't sound very nice at all: there was desperation in his voice, and with that, Willy could sympathize: he was all too familiar with Dede and his ways. Willy cocked his head. 'Pater' was a word that would never be understood, so with time of the essence, Willy made an effort. "Daddy dearest sent you all this way to say that? Okey-dokey, then; you said it, and I heard it."
"He said to come now."
"That, dear chap, ain't gonna happen. If I didn't take him up on it when he invited me personally, I'm not gonna take him up on it when you invite me personally ... No offense."
No offense? What kind of a ridiculous statement was that? Everything about Wonka was offensive, and Dr. Wonka would go berserk. "He said you have to, and you have to!" The rise in pitch on the last phrase had to be two octaves.
"Do not!" declared Willy, but there was compassion in his voice. "The only thing I have to do at this point is die, and that's not an in-the-near-future plan. But I admire your pluck: I can see from the grey around your gills that you've figured out that you have a scorpion on your back, and even you must know that the other side of the—heh, heh—chocolate river is coming up, fast, and you're gonna get stung. Badly, I should think. If you're lucky, it won't be to death, but, heh, heh, I for one, wouldn't take those odds. He's a scary guy—n'est pas?—but I'm guessing you've discovered that by now haven't you? By the way, Being-Strung-Along-One, has your Svengali given you any scoops about me that aren't part of the public record?"
Taking umbrage at the thought that anyone was stringing him along, Felix narrowed his eyes, his face twisting in a most unbecoming way. "Scoops? You mean like the Never Melting Ice Cream recipe you stole from my father?"
"I? Me? Steal? Stole? Are you kidding?" Willy's laugh was hardy, and then it wasn't, his eyes becoming as hard and flinty behind his shades as were the staring Blob's. "You think that I? From your—? Pure poppycock!" His teeth on edge, Willy set his jaw. He'd thought Ficklegruber the Elder had learned his lesson. "Did your elder tell you that?"
"My elder?" Incensed by the laughter, Felix, confused at first by the term, focused and caught on. "Do you mean my father? No, he didn't tell me. I figured it out for myself."
"For yourself?" Willy threw back his head and laughed again, a lilting laugh this time that floated Heavenward so charmingly that Felix almost joined him in it. But he recovered himself before he did, and that he almost had only made him angrier. "You're nothing but a thief, asshole! A dirty, rotten, shit of a thief, and you ruined my father's life! You ruined all our lives!"
"Me? Dirty? Rotten? That other word? Don't be silly, dear Delusional, don't be silly. Ask your elder. See what he says. You can report back if you like. Back to the question. Has he? My elder? Given you scoops?"
Sighing, Felix dropped his hands from the gate. He was sure of the answer to that question—it was 'no'—but not sure now of the person before him asking it. Mr. Wonka, pale and small as he looked, didn't seem to be the spineless sap Willy's father had led Felix to believe he'd find, and, right about the carrots and sticks Dr. Wonka was showing him, but little else, his son seemed to know the score. He even, surprise, surprise, seemed to be commiserating with Felix. Worse, where the ice cream was concerned, Wonka seemed genuinely guiltless. It was just possible there was more to the story, and that, Felix thought, would be obscene.
Seeing doubt, and something else uncertain in the face looking back at him through the bars, a happier Willy smiled. "You've done well here, ya know; you've done all ya could do. You have that from me, and with my regards; it musta been boring waiting for me. I've been out all morning!" Flashing a grin, Willy tipped his hat. "The doctor must be getting desperate if he's sending you. You must be getting desperate if you're letting yourself be sent.
"I feel sorry for you both, but don't count on that: it's not enough sorrow to fill the center of a gum drop. Now run along and wash your hair ... And your clothes ... And you. Go and do those things. We're done. They're a much better use of your time than what you're doing here." Tipping his hat again, Willy turned away.
Felix, at the gate, put his hands back on the bars, watching him. This was all wrong. Willy, Dr. Wonka had assured him, would be easily cowed. He'd come quietly. If he didn't, Dr. Wonka had given Felix something more to say, a threat, that had given Felix pause; almost as much pause as did the odd, off-hand kindness he sensed in this candy-making crumb. Sure of his ability to threaten ten minutes ago, Felix now didn't know if he could go through with it. There'd be Hell to pay if he didn't. Dr. Wonka would see to that. Inside, nausea burbled around Felix's middle, his guts twisting like licorice.
As if Wonka were aware of his dilemma, he turned back before the crowd re-formed and his chance to be candid would be missed. "For the record, Mr. Ficklegruber, if, in future, dear daddy suggests we bring Charlie into this fray, and you harm even one hair on his head, be assured I will track you down and do to you who-knows-what, but what I do know is that you won't want to find out; because," and here Willy's voice went so soft and silky it sent chills up and down Felix's spine, "I am my father's son."
Felix blanched, feeling the churning licorice ropes drop to his soles. Mr. Wonka turned on his heel, manic giggles overtaking him. Though almost afternoon, it was dawn for the lad: surely, he was in way over his head. That Terence fellow had tried to warn him. Face slack, lips parted, Felix stepped back from the gate, feeling as if he'd like to run.
Before the re-forming knot of people could shout out their questions, Willy was across the courtyard, escaping, because what he had just said, that last sentence, was the biggest fear in his life, and laughter was the only release he had.
I do not own Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in any of its many forms, and there is no copyright infringement intended. Thanks for reading, reviewing, clicking favorite or follow, or any combination thereof!
Greetings all; did you think I had abandoned this? I don't blame you if you did, but nah, I'm going to finish it. Beginning in April, I've had to do some research for a non-fiction story, and until recently that and the job have eaten all my time. I'm sorry, to quote Mr. Wonka. Many, many thanks to those of you who took the time to review: The Silly Storyteller; Sonny April; Squirrela; elevat0r; Ifwecansparkle, for your many reviews, and I hope you are well; and XXCandyLoverXX.
