Roald Dahl: George's Marvellous Medicine

But because Grandma was now much too tall to get back into the house, she had to sleep that night in the hay-barn with the mice and the rats.

The next day, George's father came down to breakfast in a state of greater excitement than ever. 'I've been awake all night thinking about it!' he cried.

'About what, dad?' George asked him.

'About your marvellous medicine, of course! We can't stop now, my boy! We must start making more of it at once! More and more and more!'

The giant saucepan had been completely emptied the day before because there had been so many sheep and pigs and cows and bullocks to be dosed.

'But why do we need more, dad?' George asked. 'We've done all our own animals and we've made Grandma feel as frisky as a ferret even though she does have to sleep in the barn.'

'My dear boy,' cried Mr Killy Kranky, 'we need barrels and barrels of it! Tons and tons! Then we will sell it to every farmer in the world so that all of them can have giant animals! We will build a Marvellous Medicine Factory and sell the stuff in bottles at five pounds a time. We will become rich and you will become famous!'

'But wait a minute, dad,' George said.

'There's no waiting!' cried Mr Kranky, working himself up so much that he put butter in his coffee and milk on his toast. 'Don't you understand what this tremendous invention of yours is going to do to the world! Nobody will ever go hungry again!'

'Why won't they?' asked George.

'Because one giant cow will give fifty buckets of milk a day!' cried Mr Kranky, waving his arms. 'One giant chicken will make a hundred fried chicken dinners, and one giant pig will give you a thousand pork chops! It's tremendous, my dear boy! It's fantastic! It'll change the world.'

'But wait a minute, dad,' George said again.

'Don't keep saying wait a minute!' shouted Mr Kranky. 'There isn't a minute to wait ! We must get cracking at once!'

'Do calm down, my dear,' Mrs Kranky said from the other end of the table. 'And stop putting marmalade on your cornflakes.'

'The heck with my cornflakes!' cried Mr Kranky, leaping up from his chair. 'Come on, George! Let's get going! And the first thing we'll do is to make one more saucepanful as a tester.'

'But dad,' said little George. 'The trouble is . . .'

'There won't be any trouble, my boy!' cried Mr Kranky. 'How can there possibly be any trouble? All you've got to do is put the same stuff into the saucepan as you did yesterday. And while you're doing it, I'll write down each and every item. That's how we'll get the magic recipe!'

'But dad,' George said. 'Please listen to me.'

'Why don't you listen to him,' Mrs Kranky said. 'The boy's trying to tell you something.'

But Mr Kranky was too excited to listen to anyone except himself. 'And then,' he cried, 'when the new mixture is ready, we'll test it out on an old hen just to make absolutely sure we've got it right, and after that we'll all shout hooray and build the giant factory!'

'But dad . . .'

'Come on then, what is it you want to say?'

'I can't possibly remember all the hundreds of things I put into the saucepan to make the medicine,' George said.

'Of course you can, my dear boy,' cried Mr Kranky. 'I'll help you! I'll jog your memory! You'll get it in the end, you see if you don't! Now then, what was the very first thing you put in?'

'I went up to the bathroom first,' George said. 'I used a lot of things in the bathroom and on mummy's dressing-table.'

'Come on, then!' cried Mr Killy Kranky. 'Up we go to the bathroom!'

When they got there, they found, of course, a whole lot of empty tubes and empty aerosols and empty bottles. 'That's great,' said Mr Kranky. 'That tells us exactly what you used. If anything is empty, it means you used it.'

So Mr Kranky started making a list of everything that was empty in the bathroom. Then they went to Mrs Kranky's dressing-table. 'A box of powder,' said Mr Kranky, writing it down. 'Helga's hairset. Flowers of Turnips perfume. Terrific. This is going to be easy. Where did you go next?'

'To the laundry-room,' George said. 'But are you sure you haven't missed anything out up here, dad?'

'That's up to you, my boy,' Mr Kranky said. 'Have I?'

'I don't think so,' George said. So down they went to the laundry-room and once again Mr Kranky wrote down the names of all the empty bottles and cans. 'My goodness me, what a mass of stuff you used!' he cried. 'No wonder it did magic things! Is that the lot?'

'No, dad, it's not,' George said, and he led his father out to the shed where the animal medicines were kept and showed him the five big empty bottles up on the shelf. Mr Kranky wrote down all their names.

'Anything else?' Mr Kranky asked.

Little George scratched his head and thought and thought but he couldn't remember having put anything else in.

Mr Killy Kranky leapt into his car and drove down to the village and bought new bottles and tubes and cans of everything on his list. He then went to the vet and got a fresh supply of all the animal medicines George had used.

'Now show me how you did it, George,' he said. 'Come along. Show me exactly how you mixed them all together.'

They were in the kitchen now and the big saucepan was on the stove. All the things Mr Kranky had bought were lined up near the sink.

'Come along, my boy!' cried Mr Killy Kranky. 'Which one did you put in first?'

'This one,' George said. 'Goldengloss Hair Shampoo.' He emptied the bottle into the pan.

'Now the toothpaste,' George went on . . . 'And the shaving soap . . . and the face cream . . . and the nail varnish . . .'

'Keep at it, my boy!' cried Mr Kranky, dancing round the kitchen. 'Keep putting them in! Don't stop! Don't pause! Don't hesitate! It's a pleasure, my dear fellow, to watch you work!'

One by one, George poured and squeezed the things into the saucepan. With everything so close at hand, the whole job didn't take him more than ten minutes. But when it was all done, the saucepan didn't somehow seem to be quite as full as it had been the first time.

' Now what did you do?' cried Mr Kranky. 'Did you stir it?'

'I boiled it,' George said. 'But not for long. And I stirred it as well.'

So Mr Kranky lit the gas under the saucepan and George stirred the mixture with the same long wooden spoon he had used before. 'It's not brown enough,' George said. 'Wait a minute! I know what I've forgotten!'

'What?' cried Mr Kranky. 'Tell me, quick! Because if we've forgotten even one tiny thing, then it won't work! At least not in the same way.'

'A quart of brown gloss paint,' George said. 'That's what I've forgotten.'

Mr Killy Kranky shot out of the house and into his car like a rocket. He sped down to the village and bought the paint and rushed back again. He opened the can in the kitchen and handed it to George. George poured the paint into the saucepan.

'Ah-ha, that's better,' George said. 'That's more like the right colour.'

'It's boiling!' cried Mr Kranky. 'It's boiling and bubbling, George! Is it ready yet?'

'It's ready,' George said. 'At least I hope it is.'

'Right!' shouted Mr Kranky, hopping about. 'Let's test it! Let's give some to a chicken!'

'My heavens alive, why don't you calm down a bit?' Mrs Kranky said, coming into the kitchen.

' Calm down ?' cried Mr Kranky. 'You expect me to calm down and here we are mixing up the greatest medicine ever discovered in the history of the world! Come along, George! Dip a cupful out of the saucepan and get a spoon and we'll give some to a chicken just to make absolutely certain we've got the correct mixture.'

Outside in the yard, there were several chickens that hadn't had any of George's Marvellous Medicine Number One. They were pecking about in the dirt in that silly way chickens do.