The Peppers and the International Magic Guys. Sian Pattenden

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      “Well observed, young Esmé. So where is your real watch?” Uncle Potty spoke excitedly now. He picked up an apple. “Shall I ask the magic tangerine?”

      “That’s not a tangerine…” Esmé noted.

      “Oh, er, yes.” Uncle Potty tried to cover himself. “Just a little joke,” he smiled. “I will now dip all the fruit into the bowl of water to show you that your watch is not inside any of them.

      “Take this apple for instance,” Uncle Potty continued, dunking the apple in the water. “Your watch is not in here! Hurrah!”

      There was another scuffling sound and the tangerine started wobbling on the table.

      An object fell on the floor with a tiny clang – a broken-watch sort of clang.

      “I can’t do it!” whispered Monty audibly from under the table. “It won’t go in the hole.”

      Esmé winced. She hoped Uncle Potty was not about to make a big mistake. What was happening to her watch?

      “Pick another fruit,” Uncle Potty said to Esmé. “Maybe the kiwi?”

      Esmé looked blank, but Uncle Potty seized the kiwi anyway and dunked it energetically into the bowl of water.

      “No watch in here!” he hollered. “Shall I try the tangerine, finally?”

      Esmé looked at the fruit trembling on the tablecloth. She assumed Monty was trying to stuff her watch inside it. But maybe this was a double bluff – her watch was in someone’s pocket. Or maybe the trick involved an optical illusion and the water wasn’t really water, but something dry. But Esmé feared the worst.

      “Could I just have my Timex back, please?” Esmé asked.

      “Of course,” Uncle Potty replied, picking up the tangerine from which Esmé’s watch strap dangled.

      “My watch!” said Esmé and made a grab for the strap before Uncle Potty could submerge it in the water. But as she did so:

      Shhhhlooop!

      The bowl tipped over and water went everywhere – on to the table, Monty, the laptop on the floor, Esmé’s homework, the library book, the sticks…

      “My sticks!” said Monty, appearing sodden from under the table.

      “Your sticks? Look at my homework! Look at the laptop! Mum and Dad will kill us.” Esmé grabbed a tea towel and desperately started mopping water from the laptop, then her homework notebook. “Everything’s ruined!” she cried.

      Uncle Potty started to tremble.

      “Oh, me, oh, my… Monty, find some more teachers, er I mean tea cloths. I’ll go and get a sponge. Oh, Esmé, I’m terribly sorry.”

      Uncle Potty handed Esmé the tangerine, with her watch half-stuffed inside. “I hadn’t meant for the bowl of water to be so… full.”

      Esmé took the fruit-splattered Timex, sticky and dripping, and wiped it with her sleeve. The second hand had definitely stopped; there was no ticking sound. Esmé was crestfallen. It had been a very accurate watch.

      “I’ll save up and buy you a new one,” said Monty, wiping the library book with an old towel. “I’ll go out and perform some street magic.”

      Uncle Potty appeared from the garden with the mop that had a wobbly handle. “Or we could write our own magic book, Monty, and make a fortune!”

      “Brilliant!” said Monty. “I’ll go and get a pen.”

      As kind as these offers were, Esmé did not think that they were going to provide an immediate solution to the problems in hand. Things were getting out of control. The living room was becoming cluttered with magic books, the stairs covered in little plastic boxes with false panels and double hinges – and Uncle Potty kept throwing his stage clothes everywhere, ignoring the designated dirty washing bin. Now things were being damaged – Esmé’s homework, her watch, the laptop… Was the computer under guarantee? How would the family ever afford a new one? Esmé had been using it to help write a homework assignment about beluga whales on it. It was probably lost for ever. Esmé sighed loudly. She mustn’t get too upset. It wasn’t really Uncle Potty and Monty’s fault – it was Esmé who had actually knocked the water bowl. But Esmé did not think that anything would change until drastic measures were taken.

      A Ping-Pong ball is best for this trick.

      The ball is held in one hand, then suddenly glides through the air to the other.

      The secret? Thread a piece of black thread through the ball – the forefingers of both hands hold the loop taut, forming a sort of track along which the ball slides. The lightness of the Ping-Pong ball is an asset to this trick, as your friends will see.

      Just do not let them stand too close to you…

      The golden rule that any magician knows is never, ever, to repeat a trick to the same audience. Once the element of surprise is missing, the audience – or at least part of it – will work out how the trick is done. It only takes a slight difference from one performance to the next to see the mechanics of the act itself. As I was saying to Mrs Dr Pompkins only yesterday over a nice glass of sherry and a Chelsea bun – repetition is the enemy of surprise.

      In all totality,

      smé was small for her age; she was sensible-looking and always wore trousers and flat shoes. Her brother Monty was not an identical twin – his hair was lighter and he had more freckles (and besides, he was a boy). In general, he looked relatively sensible, until yesterday, that is, when they had all gone to the local party shop. Monty had spied a black sateen cape, which he excitedly purchased with three months’ pocket money. From the moment he put it on, Esmé thought, he did not look very sensible at all.

      That in itself was not a huge issue. The real issue was that Esmé had been subjected to non-stop magic for the last few days and she was beginning to feel overawed. As Uncle Potty stood mopping in the kitchen, Esmé thought back to the cause of the current trouble: Dr Pompkins.

      On the morning that he arrived, exactly four days ago, Uncle Potty gave Monty a book called Dr Pompkins – Totality Magic, as a source of magical inspiration for his new assistant. As soon as he opened the musty pages of the book, Monty was enraptured.Sitting in the armchair in the living room, he immediately insisted on trying Pompkins out on Esmé. The first thing that he wanted to try, Monty explained, was “a highly simple card trick, in all totality”.

      “Pick a card, any card,” he said, producing a deck that he splayed into an irregular fan shape with his fingers.

      Esmé chose the Jack of Hearts, memorised it and put it back into the deck carefully.

      “And now, my magic shuffle!” said Monty.

      Monty had read something about shuffling the cards in a certain way, which actually meant not shuffling them at all. For a few seconds Monty shifted the cards from one hand to the other, without actually changing the order. He kept a watch on Esmé’s card all the way through.

      However, eagle-eyed Esmé noticed what he was doing – or rather, what he was not doing.