The Quebec Analysis - A Spy Novel in 500 words

I was a child when I first heard of the Quebec Analysis. I say heard of, I invented it. A brief moment of inspiration in English Literature and there it was.

As a kid, I wrote all day, endlessly pouring out other worlds into a series of dog-eared exercise books which I bought at five for a quid from the discount stationery outlet on the light industrial estate: you know, the one near the canal. But I could never write titles until, one day, struggling in the back of Y7 EL1 it came to me. The Something Something. So many things were called The Something Something. The Maltese Falcon. The Beiderbecke affair. Like all of the best ideas, I couldn't understand how I hadn't thought of it before.

I called my story "The Quebec Analysis." It got an A. Years later, I re-used the title for my first novel. Then on we went from there. The Mumbai Incident. The St Petersburg Element. They sold pretty well. A couple were optioned for TV , every year a cheque arrived. I lived fairly happily, still in semi-obscurity, and banged them out at a rate of two per year. The Dublin Betrayal. The Berlin Distraction.

I'm not religious, but if I have a prayer it is this: Lord, preserve us from middle aged novelists with opinions. Like any white man of my age who'd constantly been told how important he was, I started to think that my opinion was necessary, desirable, a required voice in public discourse. I wrote think-pieces in the Spectator, I opined on matters of which I knew little for various newspapers, I even, God help me, went on Question Time(Making the mistake of reading Twitter afterwards).

It was this which first embroiled me in the surprisingly tedious world of international espionage. I’d said that I was shortly due at a Literary festival in the capital of one of the newer ex-Soviet republics, the president’s attempt to apply a little culture to wash away the sins of the past. It was a sizeable appearance fee and a quiet schedule. Upon returning home I discovered an email inviting me for a chat “about the nation”.

And so it was that I found myself on a watching brief at this festival, my handler (he typed, self-consciously) had instructed me in well-modulated tones to keep an eye on a fellow panellist, Jurij Kranic, a writer of absurdist fables, befriend him, have a chat. This I duly did. I found him amiable, generous and capable of holding his drink. He laughed a lot, we swapped books. I confessed to my handler that I hadn’t learned very much at all.

He smiled, and said something about how that at least they’d think that was all we’d got and I’d been a great help. Before I left, he asked if I’d sign my latest book for his wife, who was a big fan. He asked me if I’d ever thought about writing something else, comedy perhaps.

Slapstick

I suppose that now we’re coming to something approximating the end of it, and now that we're in full possession of the facts, such as they are, it would be reasonable to describe my life in toto as a farce. Not the Benny Hill sort, though there's been more than enough of that, something with a little more éclat. Moliere, maybe, but with more tits. Somewhere between the two, anyway. I had, I should stress, hoped for better. In all likelihood I wouldn’t have said that five years ago, thinking it still too early to call, there was always the opportunity for a couple of redeeming narratives to rear their heads: a late crusade against the closing of a home for arthritic dogs, perhaps, maybe a lottery win to start a foundation for underprivileged children to read abstract verse, something along those lines. But as I think we can now reasonably say that my time left can be measured more in minutes (I can feel it happening, as it goes. It’s a curious sensation, not as painful as I’d imagined, just a sort of fading. Like losing track) and, on balance, farce. A shame, I’d hoped for something more in the true love and high adventure vein, but there you have it, pne plays the cards one's dealt (quite a lot, that was part of the problem).

So in this little time we have together, I’d best set the record straight. This life of mine, which I’d had fairly high hopes for pretty much from the get go, hasn’t exactly turned out to be the high drama of my fond imaginings. Not even melodrama, alas, though it’s had its Telenovela moments. No, it was always my lot to be a farceur, doomed to the role from the minute I came out arse-first in Derriford hospital all those years ago, much to my mother’s discomfort and the bawdy amusement of the doctor, and the false amusement of his chorus of nurses, who one surmises were keeping the old fellow sweet by laughing a touch too much at his indelicate witticisms. He was an overly genial sort who was a bit too prone to hearty claps on the back, one of which caused my father to go slightly cross-eyed upon the doc’s congratulations at the arrival of a healthy baby boy. Bartholomew Vespasian Tern, if you please, 9lb 2oz, and fully cognisant of every sodding thing right from the moment he popped out. It was some years before I found out that mine was a unique experience in this regard. The room looked a lot like this room, to be honest. Hospitals never seem to change that much, always the peeling paint on the window-sill. Always the same smell.

And so I made my bow, tugged out with forceps by a Huntin’ Shootin’ and Fishin’ type who used perhaps less than the necessary level of delicacy and tact, hoicking me into this vale of tears in the manner of a man netting an overlarge perch. My first sight on this earth, other than the darkness of my mother’s womb, was his flared nostrils as he peered down on me, mewling in my own muck.

It was, needless to say, not the prettiest of sights, and with little other visual evidence to go on at this stage I was forced to the conclusion that this change in the status quo was wholly undesirable. Naturally, I reacted as a new-born would.

Never let it be said that childbirth is a magical experience. There was a lot of quasi-mystical stuff being spoken and written about it at the time of my birth. Much talk of primal energies written about by bearded men who advocated naturism and homespun arts and crafts. I looked at the doctor and I looked my mother, her exhaustion, the spent pain in her eyes, and I thought to myself (for I truly was a precocious child) “I hope I never have to do this”. For a while I lay there, wondering what on Earth happened next, after a period ( a short matter of moments, but it felt like an age) that feeling they speak of, the old maternal instincts, began to creep in, and within a minute or two she was billing just as much as any courting dove, possibly even a touch of cooing. Stroking my abundant black hair (which, I’m pleased to say, I’ve maintained right up to this moment. I’ve been let down by many people down the years, including a couple of Popes, but my barnet has remained a constant boon companion) and whispering sweet motherly nonsense, noises mostly. But I was never able to forget that first look that she gave me, horror and disgust mingling with the sheer physical pain. The fix was in early doors, and I never fully trusted her after that (rightly, as it turns out); not that I bear the good woman any-ill-will, who could forgive their child all that pain? Either every child-bearing woman in human history has been a saint (and I mean one of the actual proper ones, not the made some biscuits for the homeless type you get these days) or they were all lying. All of them.

I suspect you know where I’m placing my bets. Though given my track record with the turf accountants, you’re best off ignoring them.