Roald Dahl's Mischief and Mayhem Read online

  ‘But how in-teresting, Violet,’ said Mrs Beauregarde. ‘You are a clever girl.’

  ‘Keep chewing, baby!’ said Mr Beauregarde. ‘Keep right on chewing! This is a great day for the Beauregardes! Our little girl is the first person in the world to have a chewing-gum meal!’

  Everybody was watching Violet Beauregarde as she stood there chewing this extraordinary gum. Little Charlie Bucket was staring at her absolutely spellbound, watching her huge rubbery lips as they pressed and unpressed with the chewing, and Grandpa Joe stood beside him, gaping at the girl. Mr Wonka was wringing his hands and saying, ‘No, no, no, no, no! It isn’t ready for eating! It isn’t right! You mustn’t do it!’

  ‘Blueberry pie and cream!’ shouted Violet. ‘Here it comes! Oh my, it’s perfect! It’s beautiful! It’s . . . it’s exactly as though I’m swallowing it! It’s as though I’m chewing and swallowing great big spoonfuls of the most marvellous blueberry pie in the world!’

  ‘Good heavens, girl!’ shrieked Mrs Beauregarde suddenly, staring at Violet, ‘what’s happening to your nose!’

  ‘Oh, be quiet, mother, and let me finish!’ said Violet.

  ‘It’s turning blue!’ screamed Mrs Beauregarde. ‘Your nose is turning blue as a blueberry!’

  ‘Your mother is right!’ shouted Mr Beauregarde. ‘Your whole nose has gone purple!’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Violet, still chewing away.

  ‘Your cheeks!’ screamed Mrs Beauregarde. ‘They’re turning blue as well! So is your chin! Your whole face is turning blue!’

  ‘Spit that gum out at once!’ ordered Mr Beauregarde.

  ‘Mercy! Save us!’ yelled Mrs Beauregarde. ‘The girl’s going blue and purple all over! Even her hair is changing colour! Violet, you’re turning violet, Violet! What is happening to you?’

  ‘I told you I hadn’t got it quite right,’ sighed Mr Wonka, shaking his head sadly.

  ‘I’ll say you haven’t!’ cried Mrs Beauregarde. ‘Just look at the girl now!’

  Everybody was staring at Violet. And what a terrible, peculiar sight she was! Her face and hands and legs and neck, in fact the skin all over her body, as well as her great big mop of curly hair, had turned a brilliant, purplish-blue, the colour of blueberry juice!

  ‘It always goes wrong when we come to the dessert,’ sighed Mr Wonka. ‘It’s the blueberry pie that does it. But I’ll get it right one day, you wait and see.’

  ‘Violet,’ screamed Mrs Beauregarde, ‘you’re swelling up!’

  ‘I feel sick,’ Violet said.

  ‘You’re swelling up!’ screamed Mrs Beauregarde again.

  ‘I feel most peculiar!’ gasped Violet.

  ‘I’m not surprised!’ said Mr Beauregarde.

  ‘Great heavens, girl!’ screeched Mrs Beauregarde. ‘You’re blowing up like a balloon!’

  ‘Like a blueberry,’ said Mr Wonka.

  ‘Call a doctor!’ shouted Mr Beauregarde.

  ‘Prick her with a pin!’ said one of the other fathers.

  ‘Save her!’ cried Mrs Beauregarde, wringing her hands.

  But there was no saving her now. Her body was swelling up and changing shape at such a rate that within a minute it had turned into nothing less than an enormous round blue ball – a gigantic blueberry, in fact – and all that remained of Violet Beauregarde herself was a tiny pair of legs and a tiny pair of arms sticking out of the great round fruit and a little head on top.

  ‘It always happens like that,’ sighed Mr Wonka. ‘I’ve tried it twenty times in the Testing Room on twenty Oompa-Loompas, and every one of them finished up as a blueberry. It’s most annoying. I just can’t understand it.’

  ‘But I don’t want a blueberry for a daughter!’ yelled Mrs Beauregarde. ‘Put her back to what she was this instant!’

  Mr Wonka clicked his fingers, and ten Oompa-Loompas appeared immediately at his side.

  ‘Roll Miss Beauregarde into the boat,’ he said to them, ‘and take her along to the Juicing Room at once.’

  ‘The Juicing Room?’ cried Mrs Beauregarde. ‘What are they going to do to her there?’

  ‘Squeeze her,’ said Mr Wonka. ‘We’ve got to squeeze the juice out of her immediately. After that, we’ll just have to see how she comes out. But don’t worry, my dear Mrs Beauregarde. We’ll get her repaired if it’s the last thing we do. I am sorry about it all, I really am . . .’

  But don’t chomp on one of Willy Wonka’s gourmet chewing-gum meals to turn blue, like Violet Beauregarde did. There are FAR simpler ways to make yourself look like a giant blueberry.

  YOU WILL NEED:

  A blue hat

  A pair of blue trousers

  A pair of blue socks

  A blue T-shirt

  A blue jumper

  27 more blue jumpers, each one bigger than the last

  Blue face paint

  WHAT YOU DO:

  Put on the blue hat, the blue trousers, the blue socks, the blue T-shirt and the 28 blue jumpers.

  Daub on the blue face paint.

  Look in a mirror.

  Ta-daaaaaaa! You’re a GIANT BLUEBERRY!

  Now tell grown-ups that you ate too many blueberries. They will be TOTALLY fooled and think that’s why you’re so big and round and blue.

  In which The Grand High Witch describes the spell that will turn children into mice at PRECISELY nine o’clock the next morning, just in time for school.

  ‘Attention again!’ The Grand High Witch was shouting. ‘I vill now give to you the rrrecipe for concocting Formula 86 Delayed Action Mouse-Maker! Get out pencils and paper.’

  Handbags were opened all over the room and notebooks were fished out.

  ‘Give us the recipe, O Brainy One!’ cried the audience impatiently. ‘Tell us the secret.’

  ‘First,’ said The Grand High Witch, ‘I had to find something that vould cause the children to become very small very qvickly.’

  ‘And what was that?’ cried the audience.

  ‘That part vos simple,’ said The Grand High Witch. ‘All you have to do if you are vishing to make a child very small is to look at him through the wrrrong end of a telescope.’

  ‘She’s a wonder!’ cried the audience. ‘Who else would have thought of a thing like that?’

  ‘So you take the wrrrong end of a telescope,’ continued The Grand High Witch, ‘and you boil it until it gets soft.’

  ‘How long does that take?’ they asked her.

  ‘Tventy-vun hours of boiling,’ answered The Grand High Witch. ‘And vhile this is going on, you take exactly forty-five brrrown mice and you chop off their tails vith a carving-knife and you fry the tails in hair-oil until they are nice and crrrisp.’

  ‘What do we do with all those mice who have had their tails chopped off?’ asked the audience.

  ‘You simmer them in frog-juice for vun hour,’ came the answer. ‘But listen to me. So far I have only given you the easy part of the rrrecipe. The rrreally difficult problem is to put in something that vill have a genuine delayed action rrree-sult, something that can be eaten by children on a certain day but vhich vill not start vurrrking on them until nine o’clock the next morning vhen they arrive at school.’

  ‘What did you come up with, O Brainy One?’ they called out. ‘Tell us the great secret!’

  ‘The secret,’ announced The Grand High Witch triumphantly, ‘is an alarm-clock!’

  ‘An alarm-clock!’ they cried. ‘It’s a stroke of genius!’

  ‘Of course it is,’ said The Grand High Witch.

  ‘You can set a tventy-four-hour alarm-clock today and at exactly nine o’clock tomorrow it vill go off.’

  ‘But we will need five million alarm-clocks!’ cried the audience. ‘We will need one for each child!’

  ‘Idiots!’ shouted The Grand High Witch. ‘If you are vontin