Chapter 30- Return from the Farthest Shore

When the Elevator reached the factory and the doors rolled open, Wonka stopped Charlie.

"Wait," he said, scrutinising him, and whipping out from his breast pocket a hankerchief. "Yer got a bit..."

Charlie touched his face. Snozzberry juice. Deftly Wonka wiped it from under his chin, his face close to his. Charlie glanced up- absurdly, Wonka was blushing. The boy stared hard; he hadn't thought his mentor could blush. Wonka was concentrating hard on the snozzberry stain, his tongue poked out between his teeth in concentration that when his eyes met Charlie's, he turned even pinker. But when he mimed a stage cough and tried to turn away, Charlie caught his hand.

"Willy," he laughed, enjoying the sound of those two unfamiliar syllables on his tongue.

"Please Charlie, not here," Wonka said, somewhat stiffly. It was then Charlie realised the Elevator had taken them straight to the Chocolate Room, the little crooked house sat as serenely in the meadow as they'd left it.

"Oh," he said, and he laughed again; he couldn't seem stop laughing, or smiling today. The bright feeling filled him up like a gas lamp; he wondered that someone might see it, shining out of him.

"Be serious," said Wonka, and Charlie saw the lines of anxiety on his forehead. Really! How human he was becoming recently!

And then, strangely intense. He came close to Charlie, bending to his knees so that they were on the same level. He said, "Charlie, I need your word. That you won't say anything to your mother, or father, or even-"

"Of course I won't."

"If you'd just promise me-"

"Willy!" Charlie said, shocked. For a moment they looked at one another, Wonka's eyes boring into him, before he hesitated, and they dropped in shame and embarrassment. "Yeh. I know yer won't," he mumbled, getting to his feet, dusting himself off.

Charlie opened his mouth to say that Wonka could trust him, that he'd never betray him, but before he could Wonka pivoted on his heel, bright again. "Let's get truckin'. Mr and Mrs B'll be wondering what's keeping ya." With long bounding strides, he headed towards the Bucket house. Charlie had to run to catch up with him.

Charlie hadn't even his hand on the handle, when the front door flew open. He didn't have a chance to say anything either, before there were a pair of arms around him and squeezing the life out of him.

"Oh, Charlie!" Mrs Bucket cried, and then Grandpa Joe was there too, and his father, his hand on Charlie's shoulder. Even Grandpa George stood a little way off, but with tears bright in his eyes. Grandpa Josephine sat up in bed, beaming, and Grandma Georgina exclaimed at the sight of him, "Charlie, I was starting to wonder where you went!"

"Oh Charlie, until Doris told us what had happened we were besides ourselves with worry," Mrs Bucket gabbled.

"Well," said Mr Bucket, with a tense smile thick with emotion, "actually, we were besides ourselves with anger. Afterwards we were besides ourselves with worry.

With all the hugs and kisses and tears Willy Wonka was quite forgotten. This didn't seem to bother him; he put his hands in his pockets and was only remembered when he leant back on his heels and started singing a jaunty tune;

"Doctor Foster went to Gloucester,

In a shower of rain;

He stepped in a puddle,

Right up to his middle,

And never went there again."

It was a strange rendition he sung; it started off lively, but by the final verse he slower it down till he was singing as though to a funeral march. But it made the Buckets finally notice him.

"Why, Mr Wonka!" Grandpa Joe exclaimed, bounding over to pump his hand vigorously. "We're so glad that you're all right!"

"Yes, Willy, we heard you were ill. Are you quite all right now?" Mr Bucket asked with concern. He refrained from attacking the chocolatier though; Wonka was still taking a furious hand shaking from Grandpa Joe.

"Oh, right- as- rain!" he said, as Grandpa Joe tried to wrench his arm off.

When Wonka finally got free of the old man they went inside the house and sat around the table, as Mrs Bucket put the kettle on. Charlie noticed that the Christmas tree still squatted in the corner, and the presents laid untouched. His father followed his gaze.

"Well, it didn't seem like Christmas without you," he explained.

"So we postponed it!" chimed in Grandpa George.

Charlie glanced at the presents, and then at his mother cheekily. "So, can we open them now?"

"Oh, go on then!" said Mrs Bucket, half way through pouring the tea.

There was a scramble for the presents, and mad unwrapping, mostly by Charlie and Grandpa Joe, while Mr Bucket and Grandpa George sat at table with Wonka and tried to ply him about what happened in Loompa Land. Wonka replied with his usual dramatic relish ("Seven foot high!" "An inch away from death!" "-And it was so terrified of me it legged it!") but while he did so, out of the corner of his eye, he looked at Charlie. The boy was tearing through the paper delightedly.

Like a child, Wonka thought, and for a for a moment was distracted from his story, looking as though someone had struck him.

Charlie, knelt on the floor, twisted round to him, rattling a box by his ear. "This one says it's from you Mr Wonka," he said.

Wonka snapped back to reality. "Ah, yes," he said. "Well, don't dilly or dally. Go on," and he gestured that Charlie should open it.

Unlike the rest, which he torn through in haste, Charlie opened Wonka's present very carefully, with a great deal of tenderness and ceremony, so that by the time he'd taken off the rest of the paper every eye was on him.

Inside the box was a raspberry kite. Wonka coughed.

"It woz your first invention idea, remember? We never ended up making 'em. I figured we could go fly it sometime." But again, he spoke rather stiffly and formally. He'd hardly finished however when Charlie threw his arms around him.

"It's brilliant!" he said. Wonka went as stiff as a board.

"-Absolutely marvellous," Grandpa Joe was exclaiming. "Why, I haven't flown a kite since..."

Charlie's mouth, close to his ear. "Willy? Mr Wonka? What's wrong?"

As Charlie pulled close to him, Wonka pulled away.

To Grandpa Joe; "Why, y'know that's a great idea! We outta go on a lil family outing in the High Pressure Winds room-"

Charlie, standing with his hands limply by his side, looked disconsolate.

Wonka, glancing at Mrs Bucket by the counter, noticed she was watching her son rather carefully. Immediately, he launched into his fifth account of Charlie's battle with the snozzwhanger. During a particular loud hand gesture, Grandpa Joe, who'd rejoined them at the table piped up, "Why Mr Wonka, you're missing your gloves!" And then, rather obliviously, "Those are some nasty scars! How did you do those?"

Wonka folded his hands self-consciously on the table, but it was too late; the other Buckets had seen, nor were they as innocent as Grandpa Joe. In the long, awkward silence that followed, he seemed to have realised he'd made some kind of social faux pas, because he coughed and said, "Sorry. Must have been those beans ."

Wonka sat still, hands folded, looking at a crack in the table. Charlie stood behind him, stricken.

At last Wonka said, with a heaviness the Buckets did not often hear from him, "Well, that's nothing to worry about. It was a long time ago."

And then, it was as though he was a slide projector, and someone had inserted the next slide. He rubbed his hands together, a smile stretched across his face. He said, "So, where are my presents?"

There was much to tell about what had happened, a lot the Buckets wanted to hear. Wonka didn't leave until the evening. And though Charlie was happy to see his family again, he kept feeling strange. Although he knew it was only an act, Wonka's cold behaviour hurt- especially after what had happened between them... and thinking that that, here, amongst his family felt even stranger.

He begun to start having strange thoughts. That in the factory there had always been two worlds; Wonka's world, and his family's. Because, it occurred to him that they had never fit in with Wonka's world. Just their house was proof of that, and likewise the way Wonka had befriended the Buckets, whilst still keeping them at arms length. Only Charlie could move between these two worlds, and yet he felt now that he had moved more thoroughly onto Wonka's side.

He could be wrong, of course- maybe it was just that he'd spent so long in Loompa Land- but he felt a little out of place here, now.

For example as dinner was served his attention started to drift away again to the intimacies of last night. Mr Wonka had been so gentle... he'd seen the side of him he'd only seen in the dream, in the young Willy; so tender, vulnerable, almost innocent. And so- human. Once, Charlie would have thought that discovering his marvellous mentor was like him, only flesh and blood, would have spoiled it. But somehow, it only made him more marvellous; that he was wonderful and magical and real.

And it felt... it felt...

A hand, suddenly waving in front of his face. He jumped out of his skin.

"He's away with the fairies!" Grandpa George laughed.

Charlie flushed, and reached for the peas.

And he thought, with a colouring shame, If only they could see the inside of my head!

Everyone had gone to bed, but Charlie couldn't sleep. Laid back in his bed, he was restless, tracing patterns in the fake stars out of the window, marking out his own constellations.

A keening cree-ak.

Charlie sat up. It was his ladder.

"Hello?" he called softly.

Mrs Bucket's head emerged from the top of the creaky ladder. "Just me, Charlie," she said, keeping her voice low. About to step up onto the landing, she hesitated. "Can I come in?" she asked.

"Of course," he said, a little bewildered. He swung his legs off the side of his bed. His mother climbed up, and smiled around the room. A little absently, it seemed to him, she ran her hands over the cork board, touching some of the old pictures he'd tacked up eons ago, now curling in the corners. Her hand moved over to the old Wonka bar wrappers. Her smile deepened.

"I can't believe you still keep these now," she chuckled. She looked over her shoulder at him.

"Well..." he said.

"And these," she moved over to the pictures he'd drawn of the factory; Willy Wonka and the factory; him and Willy Wonka. She grinned at him. "Have you ever shown Willy these?"

He blushed. "He's never been up here."

"Ah," she said. She turned and smiled at him, hands behind her back. Charlie smiled back, puzzled.

"Is it alright if I sit with you?" she asked.

"Sure."

He felt the bed sink as she sat down next to him. A beat.

"We need to get you a new bed Charlie."

Beat.

"Why didn't you say the springs had gone?"

"I dunno... I just got so busy working with Mr Wonka... I guess I didn't think about it."

Silence. Darkness. Grandpa George's long drawn out snore.

"Do you not feel as though you can tell us things that bother you, Charlie?"

Charlie's head snapped round. "Pardon?" he said.

"If there's something that's upsetting you, or even if there's just something you want to talk about, you know you can come to us, don't you? To me or your father, or your grandparents. You know your Grandma Josephine is a good listener- I wouldn't always recommend your Grandpa George, but- well, what I'm trying to say is that you would come to us, wouldn't you?"

Guardedly, Charlie nodded. He started to fidget now, picking at a ragged fingernail.

"Because I don't want you to think there's something you can't tell us- even if you think it's embarrassing."

Softly Charlie said, "I know Mum."

She carried on, her voice gaining momentum; "Because, well- I can't help but feel like for the last few weeks you've been getting distant from us."

He looked up sharply. "That's..."

"And you know there's nothing you could tell me that would stop me loving you, don't you?"

Charlie's chest tightened. At that same moment, Grandpa George's snore hitched, and rumbled out like a low growl.

Mrs Bucket said, "Would you come outside with me for a moment Charlie?"

She stood, and the bed keened and levelled out again. His heart starting to beat faster, Charlie could do nothing but nod.

Down the ladder and quietly past his grandparents, he was thinking furiously. When Mrs Bucket pulled the door closed behind them and they stepped out into the swuldge, turned white in the false moonlight, he burst out; "I'm sorry. I know I haven't spent much time with your or Dad recently. It's just that me and Mr Wonka have been so busy, what with the launch of the bubbletastic balls, and the trip to Loompa Land, and-"

Mrs Bucket's look was as frank as the moonlight. She said, "Charlie, I know."

He thought to keep his hands steady. She couldn't mean- there was no way she could know-

"Know what?" he hedged.

Mrs Bucket seemed to hesitate, and then from out of her apron pocket, she drew out an old crumpled scrap of paper. "I don't want you to be embarrassed, but I found this in your room."

Charlie took the note from her. He unfolded it. His heart gave a sudden, dry lurch. His guilt laid there, given in handwriting.

-Please help me tell him how I feel, and please, please don't let him hate me-

"It's not- it isn't-" he stuttered. How could he have left something like this around? How could he have been so stupid?

Mrs Bucket took a step towards him. "Charlie, it's alright," she said.

Instinctively, he flinched away. "No, you've got it wrong! I'm not- we're not-"

It took everything in him, when she clasped hold of his hands, not to shove her away.

She spoke hurriedly, in a breathless whisper; "You've nothing to be ashamed about. See- I knew I was right to talk to you about this. You've been letting it cut you up, haven't you?"

Charlie couldn't say anything. His throat felt bone dry. "I-" he choked.

She pulled him into a fierce embrace. "Charlie, I'm telling you; it's alright."

When, pressed into his mother's arms, one clear thought cut through the chaos; Hold on a minute. This isn't how I expected this to go.

He said, "You... you're not angry?"

"Of course not." She embraced him tighter, and at last, he gave himself into the embrace. Her hand, stroking the hair at the nape of his neck. "Listen Charlie; there's nothing wrong with it. I know there are a lot of people in this world still with old-fashioned views, but you don't have to listen to them. It's natural. If that's the way you are, that's all there is to it."

Charlie thought, Huh?

"I know you've had a tough time of it at school, but I promise it'll be easier as you get older. And don't worry; I'll talk to your father. And then, hey-" she drew back, a bright smile on her face, "I tell you what- why don't we invite him over for dinner?"

But Mr Wonka comes over for dinner half the time anyway...

Something struck him.

"Hold on," he said, "who?"

Mrs Bucket gave him her best don't-you-be-coy-with-me-young-man face and said, "Why, Rowan, of course!"

To be continued.