Esmerelda Smudge and the Magic Pepper Pot

by Mandy Martin

tights and a billowing white shirt.

  “Is that –?” she started.

  “Shhh!” Mum murmured without taking her eyes off the stage.

  Mum and Esme watched, transfixed, as the man leapt and pirouetted to the achingly lovely notes filling the hall. When he finished, Mum clapped loudly, the noise shattering the spell.

  “Mum!” Esme hissed, “He’ll hear you.”

  Mum dropped her hands into her lap and chewed her lip. Esme had never seen her look so lost. Or so young. “Nicolai,” she said, the words soft and gentle.

  “Is that my dad?” Esme leaned forwards again and stared at the stage. The ballet dancer was crouched at the front of the platform speaking to the darkness. Esme guessed he was rehearsing.

  “Do you want to go down there?” she said to Mum. Mum shook her head, teardrops glistening on her cheeks in the dim light.

  “Do you?” Mum said in return. Esme thought about it. She’d never had a dad, so she didn’t really miss him. Mum hadn’t tried to keep in touch. She said it was for Esme to contact him when she was older. Was she ready now? Like this?

  “No, I don’t think so. Too much explaining to do,” she giggled, holding up the silver pot. “Let’s go to your art exhibition, shall we?” She held her hand out to Mum. Seeing her naked arm, Esme realised something dreadful. “Besides, I’m only wearing pants!”

  Mum looked at Esme in dismay and quickly took off her cardigan. “Oh my goodness me, get us home. Now!”

  Still giggling, Esme clutched the pot and wished for home. She stared at the spotlight on the stage until she felt the sneeze building in her nose. In the instant Esme let the first sneeze escape, Nicolai glanced up at the box. Then he stood and shielded his eyes as if trying to get a better look.

  Mum held out one hand longingly just as the second sneeze burst forth. The theatre disappeared and mum and daughter landed in a heap on the door mat.

  Sneaky Sneeze

  Esme pulled at her skirt, trying to lift the scratchy netting off her scabbed knees. She was about to complain to Mum, but Mum’s face shone with happiness. With a resigned sigh, Esme followed her into the chilly church and wished she’d brought a coat.

  They were only a few minutes late, despite their trip to Russia, and Mum hurried off to find her fellow artists. Esme wandered around looking at the paintings and wondering how long they would have to stay.

  A large misshapen lady waddled over to accost Esme as she stared blankly at a pale painting of a field of cows. “You must be Alice’s daughter,” the woman boomed, despite standing rather too close for comfort. “The resemblance is striking, although you don’t have your mother’s colouring.” Mum had blonde hair while Esme’s was dark, like Dad’s she knew now.

  “How charming you look, what a fetching gown.” Esme glared down at the pink glittery frock and said nothing. “Are you an artist, like your Mama?” the lady continued, her huge chest heaving with the effort of speaking so loud. “You want to grow up like her, I am sure. Such a talented lady.”

  Esme looked at the woman in amazement. She loved Mum, of course she did, but who would want to be so worried and weepy all the time? Esme was going to change the world, or at least one jungle part of it, not work in a dim office tapping at a computer all day. Besides, she was about as good at drawing as she was at ballet.

  Suddenly Esme realised she didn’t take after either of her parents. She wasn’t tall, elegant and graceful, like Dad, or arty and creative like Mum. The thought made her feel miserable and a bit lonely. Maybe that was what was wrong with Mum - why she was sometimes so sad. Maybe she missed having someone who was like her to talk to, even after all this time.

  “Do have a cookie,” the lady said, when Esme didn’t answer any of her questions. “There’s juice, too, over by the pulpit.” She gestured in the general direction, then hailed another poor unsuspecting guest and left Esme in peace.

  “I see you’ve met Mildred,” Mum whispered as the lady charged through the crowd like a rhino. “She can be rather overbearing, but she means well.”

  “Are you lonely, Mum?” Esme said abruptly.

  “Where did that come from?” Mum asked in surprise. For a moment her face looked bare, like a winter tree, and then she recovered and smiled. “How can I be lonely, when I have you?” She wrapped her arms around Esme and kissed her hair.

  “But what about when I finish school and go to Borneo, what then?”

  Mum laughed. “That’s a long way off yet, Elderflower. Don’t wish your life away.” They both hesitated at the word wish. “Have you seen the painting of the orangutan yet?” Mum said hurriedly. “It’s stunning. This way.” She towed Esme away through the crowd.

  Esme tried to appreciate all the paintings and drawings and multi-media collages, but after a while her mind drifted. Now she had seen Mum’s loneliness, it was hard to forget it. Mum needed someone to have fun with, even if Esme didn’t feel she needed a dad all that much. You couldn’t miss what you’d never had.

  I wish Mum and Dad had stayed together, she thought as she surreptitiously stole her third digestive and began licking off the chocolate. Her nose tickled and she sneezed all over her biscuit. No! Esme screamed in her mind. No, I don’t wish that. That would change everything.

  The pepper pot was back at home, buried in her sock drawer. But Esme could feel it tugging at her, trying to force the second sneeze.

  Esme held her nose and sang a nursery rhyme in her mind. Anything to stop her thinking about her accidental wish. If Mum wanted Dad in her life, well, she knew where he was now. It wasn’t for Esme – and especially not a meddling pepper pot – to interfere.

  Spelling Dilemma

  “Mum,” Esme said a few weeks later. “It’s the Spelling Championships next Saturday. What am I going to do? Should I make a wish, and win for the school, or tell Mr Night what really happened so he can pick someone else?”

  Mum looked up from her painting, a frown creasing her face. “I’d forgotten. It’s a bit late to tell Mr Night: he’ll want to know how you cheated and I wouldn’t have a clue how to start explaining that!” Mum still couldn’t deal with the idea of a magic pepper pot, even after going all the way to Russia. They had checked it on the Internet: Nicolai was playing Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake in Moscow. Mum had gone a bit funny, and refused to talk about the pot or Esme’s dad.

  “Why don’t you try and learn the spellings, Elderflower? Win on your own merit? I’m sure the words must be in that beautiful head of yours somewhere. How else did your magic pot get them out?”

  Esme scrunched her nose. She hadn’t thought of it like that. But then how had the pot turned her into a boy, or transported her and Mum hundreds of miles in an instant? You couldn’t explain away magic. Was it possible to learn the spellings? She pulled a face. If she couldn’t learn ten for a Monday test, she wasn’t going to learn over a hundred before next Saturday. But the alternative was putting her trust in the pepper pot. She could almost see it smirking through its wrapping of socks and tights.

  “Okay, I’ll try.”

  “Good girl,” Mum said, returning to her watercolour. “Go and get your list and I’ll test you now.”

  The next ten days passed in a horrid blur of ‘cial’ and ‘tial’ and other things Esme didn’t feel she needed to know. Even Mum was getting ratty and confused.

  “Is spelling so darn important?” Mum burst out one morning. “Surely these days you can use spell check, the same as you add up with a calculator?”

  That was when Esme knew Mum had had enough. She usually thought spelling was more important than PE and Music put together.

  The pepper pot called to Esme, prancing around her dreams and leaving her with itchy eyes and a bad temper in the mornings. It enticed her with images of her class clapping as she won the Championships.

  As Esme woke again to the aroma of incense she had to admit it was tempting. Who would know? She only had to do okay at the Championships – whatever the pot suggested, she didn’t hav
e to win. As long as she didn’t embarrass herself and the school, that would be enough.

  The memory of her pirouetting across the stage and being sick on the ballet examiner’s shoes filled her head. Definitely no wishes.

  “Are you nervous?” Nat asked at home time, the Friday before the Championships. Esme nodded. “Will you, you know, er, sneeze?” Nat whispered, checking that Mr Night wasn’t paying attention.

  Esme shook her head. “Mum and I have been practising non-stop. I’m going to win or lose on my own.”

  “Hopefully win!” Nat grinned. “Don’t forget, if you go through to the final there’s a chance you could win a trip to Borneo.”

  “What!” Esme’s mouth hung open.

  “You look like a fish,” Nat giggled. “Didn’t you know?”

  Esme shook her head. She hadn’t paid much attention to the Spelling Championships. Her atrocious spelling was legendary. But Borneo? A chance to go and see the orangutans in their proper habitat?

  Nat waved a hand in front of Esme’s face. “Earth to Esme, Earth to Esme. You still here?” Esme nodded mutely. What should she do? She really didn’t want to use the pepper pot. But Borneo.

  Eventually the bell went for the end of school and Esme followed the others out in a daze. Some of her class mates came to wish her good luck or pat her on the back. The clever ones, who thought they should be going instead, pushed past her with their noses in the air. Esme barely