The Parent Agency

by David Baddiel

  “We will, my darling! We are!” she said.

  “What?” said Barry, slightly muffled.

  “Bonding! Of course! Drink?” She stood up again and snapped her fingers. Peevish appeared from nowhere, carrying a tray.

  “Er… yes, please…”

  “Peevish. Did you make up the drink as Barrington explained?”

  “Without question, Lady Rader-Wellorff.”

  She took a triangular glass off the tray and handed it to Barry. “A Martini. It’s still lemonade with a grape in it, rather than vodka and an olive. But, as you requested, stirred, not shaken.”

  She smiled and Barry took the glass.

  “Er… actually, I said it should be…” He paused and looked at her big smiling face. “No, right. Thanks very much.” He took a sip of the drink, which was delicious.

  “Chocolate?”

  He looked up. Peevish was now holding a tray of golden balls, arranged as an enormous pyramid.

  “My goodness, Peevish, with these you’re really spoiling us…” said Lady Rader-Wellorff.

  Peevish smiled and bowed his head at her.

  “No thanks,” said Barry. “Maybe later…”

  “What would you like to play? Blackjack, quoits, feu-en-peu, Texas hold ’em, Five Card Naughty Bum, Penny Come Quick, Tuckers Maltings, Burundu, Stinky Finger Nothings or Lucky Dicky?”

  “Um… I don’t know any of these games.”

  “Oh,” said Lady Rader-Wellorff, looking very disappointed. She thought for a moment. “Silky Knick-Knacks? Basically, the dealer is the flop, and each player has to lead with a Jack, which is called the Hunter, and then you bet who’s going to have the lowest suit in any one colour as long as it’s not diamonds. If it is, the flop removes his Silky Knick-Knacks – i.e., hands over his cards, of course – and…”

  “No, I don’t really… I don’t think I can play that. Sorry.”

  “Hmm. What can you play?”

  “Top Trumps,” said Barry. “And Snap.”

  Lady Rader-Wellorff shook her head. “Frightfully sorry, Barrington. Never heard of those.”

  Barry looked round. “I could play roulette. That looks like fun.”

  Lady Rader-Wellorff brightened immediately. “Super idea!” she said. “Here, have a chip!”

  For a second, Barry expected to see her hand over a thin fried potato covered in salt and vinegar, but instead it was a small red plastic circle. On it were written the words: One million pounds.

  She pressed it into his hand and began marching him in the direction of one of the roulette tables.

  “Er… is this the smallest amount you have?” said Barry, looking at the chip.

  “Fraid so!” she said, without a backward glance.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Lady Rader-Wellorff pulled Barry hard towards a particular roulette table, around which were seated Jeremy, Teremy, Meremy, Heremy, Queremy, Smellemy, Sea Anemone and Dave.

  “Hello, everyone!” she said. “Can I leave Barrington with you?” They all looked up. No one said anything. “Super!” said Lady Rader-Wellorff. And disappeared into the crowd.

  Barry sat down in between Jeremy and Teremy. There was hardly any room, and they didn’t move up much to let him in.

  “Place your bets, please.”

  Barry looked up. Peevish had appeared and was now wearing a weird cap with a transparent green peak. With a smooth smile, the butler twisted the roulette wheel and set the little white ball spinning round its edge.

  Jeremy, Teremy, Meremy, Heremy, Queremy, Smellemy, Sea Anemone and Dave all started frantically placing their chips on the squares laid out on the long green table. Jeremy on red, Teremy on black, Meremy on odd, Heremy on even, Queremy on the first 12, Smellemy on the middle 12, Sea Anemone on the last 12 and Dave on a corner of the table that just had a tiny bit of cheese stuck to it.

  “No bets, Your Massive Importance?” said Peevish. Barry realised he was talking to him.

  “I don’t know where to put it.”

  Peevish leant over and looked Barry closely in the eye.

  “I think 23 is always a good bet, Your Bigness.” And then he winked.

  “I don’t know,” said Barry. “I always like the number 19.”

  Peevish sighed. “No, Your Great Silliness. 23. That’s the BEST BET.”

  “Oh!” said Barry. He looked at the ball, spinning round the edges of the wheel like a cyclist going round a velodrome at top speed. It started to fall down the ramp of the wheel, heading towards the numbers.

  Quickly, he picked up his million-pound chip and, after a couple of seconds of frantically looking – where was it?! Oh yes, there between 22 and 24 – he put it down on 23. Peevish, at that point, seemed to nod to himself, and… Barry wasn’t sure, but he thought he might just have pressed something under the table.

  At any rate, the wheel stopped spinning very suddenly and the little white ball bounced down from the edge, spun a bit on 24, but then settled snugly into 23.

  “My goodness,” said Peevish. “There’s a surprise.”

  “Um… how much have I won?” said Barry.

  Peevish sprinkled a series of one-million-pound chips on the table and pushed them towards him with a little shovel.

  “Thirty-six million pounds, Your Richness.”

  “Oh my God,” said Barry. He was about to leap up and stick both hands in the air, like he’d just scored a goal, but then he noticed that all the other children were staring angrily at him.

  “That’s not fair!” said Jeremy.

  “You did it, Peevish!” said Queremy.

  “The new child always wins!” said Meremy.

  “Waaaaaaaaaaah!!!” said Sea Anemone.

  “Hmm, this is a lovely piece of cheese…” said Dave.

  “Um… sorry,” said Barry, not sure what to do. Peevish had appeared beside him with a small plastic bucket, like you get on a beach.

  “For your chips, Your Chipfulness…” he said. And ladled them in.

  “Waaaaaaaaaaaahh!!” continued Sea Anemone.

  “Look, I don’t want to upset anyone…” said Barry.

  “Nonsense, Barrington!” said Lord Rader-Wellorff, bursting through the crowd around the table. “Jolly well done. And now: guns!”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Barry was very excited on the way to the shooting range. He imagined it would be something like the ones he’d seen in various James Bond films, when James Bond practised his skills: a long indoor hall with, at the far end, a row of one-dimensional dummies with targets for faces. And at the other end would be somewhere you could shoot from, with a selection of handguns – Walther PPK? Colt M1911? – and some earmuffs for the noise.

  He was so excited, in fact, that he said, “Are we there yet?” twice on the way. He had time to say this as it took a lot longer to get there than Barry had expected. Instead of the shooting range being, for example, in a secret chamber under the house, he and Lord Rader-Wellorff and all the other children had got into another stretch limo – this time a stretch Range Rover – and Peevish started driving them out into the countryside.

  It wasn’t all that comfortable a journey. His bucket of chips rattled against his leg all the way. Sea Anemone was still crying and all the others were looking at Barry as if they’d really prefer it if he wasn’t there.

  But Barry didn’t care. He couldn’t wait to start aiming at those dummies. Bang! Take that, Goldfinger! Bang! In your face, strange Spanish man with the blond wig from Skyfall! He even started thinking about some of the clever one-liners he might say after shooting them. “Suck on that, dummy!” Ha ha, he thought, after he came up with that.

  By the time they arrived, it was starting to get dark. Peevish got out of the car and went over to a small shed. He walked in and flicked a switch. Lights flooded the area they were standing in – which turned out to be not a long hall with dummies with target faces at one end, but a long muddy field. Peevish came out of the shed, holding a bundle of greeny-brown anoraks and f
lat caps.

  “Put those on, children!” said Lord Rader-Wellorff, who, Barry noticed, was already wearing similar gear. The children all did as they were told. Then Peevish returned, pushing a wheelbarrow stacked up with what appeared to be a number of enormously long black trumpets. He started handing them out to the children one by one.

  “What are these?” said Barry, when it was his turn.

  “Guns, of course,” said Lord Rader-Wellorff. “This model is our own personal family shotgun: the Rader-Wellorff Flintlock-Mechanism Blunderbuss. Bessie for short. Goes orff with quite a bang, though, so watch out!!”

  Peevish handed Barry one of the Bessies. Barry immediately fell over. It was literally the heaviest thing he’d ever held.

  “Ha ha ha ha!!!” he heard one of the other children – it might have been Jeremy or Teremy or even Meremy – say as he struggled to get up. “Stupid Barrington’s too weak to hold his own gun!!”

  “I’m not! I just… Peevish, can you help me…”

  “Certainly, Your Weakliness.”

  “…slipped.”

  Barry managed, with help from Peevish, to stand back up. He put the gun to one side of him, leant on it, and tried to look relaxed and jaunty.

  “May I just… Your Idiocy…?” said Peevish. Barry frowned. Peevish adjusted Barry’s flat cap, which had ended up backwards on his head, so that it faced forward again.

  “Thank you, Peevish,” said Barry, wondering whether he should give him a chip from his bucket as a tip. But before he could do so, Lord Rader-Wellorff bellowed:

  “Right!! Line up, everyone!”

  The children – all of whom, apart from Barry, seemed to understand how to carry the Bessies so as not to fall over – lined up. Barry tried to make it look all right and perfectly normal that he was using his gun, basically, as a walking stick.

  “Right, Peevish,” shouted Lord Rader-Wellorff. “What’s the target today?”

  Peevish went back into the shed and came out again, holding not a dummy, not a cut-out figure of a man with a scar and a monocle who may have been in charge of a criminal organisation trying to take over the world, but a big silver platter with a big silver dome on it. He walked in front of the line of children, and said: “Voilà!” – which Barry thought was French for “Here you are” – and took the big silver dome off the big silver platter.

  Underneath was a large grey-and-white bird with beautiful yellow eyes and a black pointy beak. It looked terrified, shaking with fear. It flapped its wings, trying to fly away, but Barry could see that its legs were held to the silver platter by a series of silver chains.

  “Perfect. The grouse are so big and flappy and… shootable this time of year, eh, Peevish?”

  “Whatever you say, sir.”

  “All right. You know the drill.”

  Peevish put the silver dome back on top of the bird and walked about a hundred metres away from the line of children.

  “Hoist!” shouted Lord Rader-Wellorff. All the children heaved their Bessies up on to the top of their chests, pointing forward. With a supreme effort, Barry did so too; though he thought his arms were going to break.

  “Aim!” shouted Lord Rader-Wellorff. All the children moved their guns towards Peevish. Barry, every muscle straining, did so too.

  “Now! Remember! First shot goes to the new boy!”

  “What?” said Barry, who had been very much hoping to pretend to shoot when the time came.

  “Special treat. Special privilege.”

  “DA-AD!!” said Jeremy, Teremy, Meremy – oh, you know, all of them.

  “Stop complaining. It was the same for you when you arrived. If he misses, one of you can bag the bird! So. Are you ready, young Barrington?”

  “Um…”

  “Splendid! Let her go, Peevish!”

  With an extra flourish, the butler took off the silver dome again and expertly released the chains. The grouse flapped uncertainly, rising to just above Peevish’s head. It looked like it had been held captive so long, it didn’t understand where it should go.

  “Come on, Barrington!” shouted Lord Rader-Wellorff.

  “Go on, you stupid idiot!”

  “Shoot, you berk!”

  “What are you doing? Kill it!!”

  All this from the other children.

  Barry didn’t know what to do. He really, really, really didn’t want to shoot a defenceless bird. So he said: “I don’t want to!!”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “What’s going on, Lord R-W?” said a shrill voice. It was Lady Rader-Wellorff, who had appeared through the bushes with a number of guests from the casino.

  “Can’t make it out, Lady R-W. Barrington doesn’t seem to want to take his shot!”

  “Doesn’t want to? But I thought you said you liked guns?”

  “I did, but…” Barry didn’t know what to say. His arms were killing him, and all these people were watching, and he could feel the other children smirking at him.

  “Hmm. Not really a son of mine so far, it seems,” said Lord Rader-Wellorff. “OK, Jeremy, Teremy, Meremy, Heremy, Queremy, Smellemy, Sea Anemone and Dave: fill your boots!!”

  Barry wasn’t sure what that meant – most of them did have wellingtons on, but they were full of their feet already – but it soon became clear that what it meant, basically, was shoot the bird!! Because they all started aiming very, very intently towards it. With every ounce of strength he had left, Barry then did something which, to be honest, he hadn’t been expecting to do.

  He stepped in front of the bird and shouted: “Put your guns down!!”

  Everyone froze and looked confused. Barry could hear the flapping of the grouse above his head.

  “Pardon, Barrington?” said Lady Rader-Wellorff.

  “I said, put your guns down. Let the bird go!”

  In Barry’s mind, this sentence was meant to be accompanied by a smooth, James Bond-like move of the Bessie up to his shoulder, and then an even smoother sweep of it around in a semi-circle, to protect the bird. Unfortunately, it was actually accompanied by him swinging the barrel up to his face, hitting himself on the chin and falling over backwards.

  In fact, it would be truer to say that he went: “I said, put your guns down. Let the

  The children all looked at each other. Slowly, Barry picked himself up from the ground, using the Bessie less as a gun and more as a crutch.

  And then Jeremy swung his gun towards Barry and said, “Why should we do that?” At which point, all the other children swung their guns towards Barry as well.

  “Children! No!” said Lady Rader-Wellorff.

  “Now, now!” said Lord Rader-Wellorff.

  “Oops…” said Peevish.

  But the guns of the other children remained trained on him. Barry felt the sweat breaking out on his forehead. He felt terrified and very, very tired, all at the same time, a combination he hadn’t before known was possible. He looked over to the crowd of people watching and suddenly seemed to see the two servants – the man and woman, the ones with familiar voices – who had been standing by when he had arrived. They were looking at him with concern on their faces… their familiar faces. With concern. With hope. And with something else that Barry couldn’t quite name.

  He heard a click.

  It was Jeremy or rather Jeremy’s gun. Barry knew that time was running out. He felt something against his leg. He looked down. It was his bucket of chips: 36 million pounds’ worth.

  His legs, at least, had a tiny bit of strength left in them, so he kicked out – out and up, like Lionel Messi might have done when aiming for a free kick that needed to go up and over the wall – and the bucket rose above them all…

  turning over and over, almost in slow motion…

  … and spilling 36 million pounds of chips into the air.

  Immediately, Jeremy, Teremy, Meremy, Heremy, Queremy, Smellemy, Sea Anemone and Dave dropped their guns and started rushing all over the field, arms outstretched, trying to catch the falling chips. As did
all the guests and all the servants – apart from the oddly familiar two, who seemed to have vanished – and indeed Peevish.

  The grouse – which suddenly seemed to understand what was best for it – opened its wings and flew away, high over the trees.

  Barry looked round. Standing there, looking crestfallen, were Lord and Lady Rader-Wellorff.

  “Hmm,” said Lord Rader-Wellorff. “That didn’t go quite according to plan, did it? Still. Anything else we can do for you, Barrington?”

  “Yes,” said Barry. “I’d like to go back to the Parent Agency, please.”

  TUESDAY

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Barry! Barry! Over here, Barry! Barry!” The voices came from all around him. Everywhere he looked there was another flash. It blinded him – there were so many cameras.

  “Come on, Barry, don’t look so surprised!” said Vlad Mitt. He tugged his arm – already round Barry’s shoulder – tighter, pressing them together.

  “One of you and the missus with Barry, Vlad?” shouted someone.

  “Certainly. Come on, Morrissina…”

  Morrissina, Vlad’s wife, came over and put her arm round Barry too, so that he was standing between them. She put her other hand on her hip and, for some reason, stuck out her leg so that her bare knee showed through her dress.

  “Mitts and teeth!” she said. That was her catchphrase, which meant the three of them – the Mitts and Barry – should smile. He felt Morrissina and Vlad turn together and he felt them, or at least it seemed as though he felt them, smile. He couldn’t help joining in; it was, after all, really, really exciting being at this film premiere, in the centre of Youngdon, with the crowd shouting and all the photographers trying to get his picture. And so, as the cameras flashed again, he felt his lips spread wide apart and a great big smile fill his features.

  On Barry’s second meeting at the Parent Agency, the Head had been very apologetic about the Rader-Wellorffs.

  “So sorry,” he said. “It’s odd, because we’ve placed quite a few children with them very successfully in the past.”