The McCabe Girls Complete Collection: Cat, Fen, Pip, Home Truths
Freya North
Available for the first time as an ebook bundle, four novels following the fun and fortunes of the McCabe sisters - and of course the incomparable Uncle Django.Includes an extract from The Way Back HomeCAT is in for the ride of her life. Fleeing from a messy break-up, she lands a job reporting on the Tour de France and quickly realises it’s not all about bikes. With sex, drugs, large bulges and larger egos, as the spectacle unfolds, Cat’s life mirrors the peaks and perils of the race.FEN has waited ages for a man – and then two have turned up at once! Torn between a handsome publisher and a rugged landscape architect, Fen finds herself falling for both of them in a haze of sex, art and severe indecision.PIP makes a living clowning for children’s parties and hospital wards, so when she meets a sophisticated high-flying exec, it seems like they have nothing in common. But it seems that opposites often attract…In HOME TRUTHS, Freya North reunites her popular McCabe girls… because family matters. Doesn’t it?Raised by their loving and eccentric uncle Django, the McCabe sisters assume their mid-thirties would be a time of stability and happiness. But at Django's 75th birthday party secrets are revealed that throw the amily into chaos. Can heart and home ever be reconciled for the McCabes? After all, what does it mean if suddenly your sisters aren’t quite your sisters?Also includes an extract from THE WAY BACK HOME, which centres on Cat’s friend Oriana Taylor and her search for love and redemption.
FREYA NORTH: THE MCCABE GIRLS COMPLETE COLLECTION
Cat
Fen
Pip
Home Truths
Freya North
Copyright (#ulink_3f4e9f13-5fa4-5211-b00f-a7ea87dcc010)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
Copyright © Freya North 1999, 2001, 2003, 2006
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015
Freya North asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007462247; 9780007462223; 9780007462261; 9780007325788
Ebook Edition © September 2015 ISBN: 9780008160098
Version: 2017-11-27
Contents
Cover (#u1407c7fe-cfde-5352-ba9d-0d1e6157492b)
Title Page (#u07fc8ad7-aebf-53f4-984e-58a85de26f60)
Copyright (#u76a8b711-4cf6-5d72-8548-377b1e6839fa)
Cat (#uf6a46c9c-feb9-5a4c-a087-23d2a09ebce9)
Fen (#ue8576851-41f7-5340-a6a6-e960f7c2b5a3)
Pip (#u3ea28e08-27ad-5d67-8660-6e1673b5060a)
Home Truths (#u3623f4ea-a037-5c9e-8978-c70e79ea6471)
Keep Reading … (#ucbf182e1-7817-50e5-b817-fa3e0c6797ff)
About the Author (#u23021ed1-5bbb-5d13-bf69-c2a61f162fdd)
Also by Freya North (#u0a85f0d5-2f12-5065-a2bd-ea8cf6295027)
About the Publisher (#u8ab286c5-12ec-513b-9848-1fc74ec9c2a4)
FREYA NORTH
Cat
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by
William Heinemann 1999
Copyright © Freya North 1999
Afterword © Freya North 2012
Freya North asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
Source ISBN: 9780007462230
Ebook Edition © June 2012 ISBN: 9780007462247
Version: 2017-11-27
FIRST EDITION
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
For Emma O’Reilly
Honest and true.
And a great friend.
Contents
Cover (#uf6a46c9c-feb9-5a4c-a087-23d2a09ebce9)
Copyright (#ua920dc24-d2a7-50b3-afb1-f8fed9276f74)
Dedication (#u1a86352e-6fb6-5f86-8c91-6b90981c3feb)
Map (#u1fee64a3-bc80-5c0e-9c21-2765386f7cf2)
Cat McCabe and the Tour De France (#u7cbbca40-9be3-5cfd-b4f0-03d43ef0d0f7)
Jules Le Grand and Team Systeme Vipere (#u42d765eb-508a-5c53-8f79-c427d0c421b0)
Rachel McEwen and Team Zucca Mv (#u49c9f3eb-fbcf-53a6-a18a-ad3046b71741)
Ben York and Team Megapac (#uff84f299-aa8b-5578-ad7b-2f8743ce491c)
Setting the Wheels in Motion (#u032b4f8e-c9df-53e0-bdca-afbb9bf4c5a4)
Prologue Time Trial: Delaunay Le Beau, Saturday 3 July (#uf765b607-6b80-55af-a10c-dc2739b2ff0f)
Stage 1: Delaunay Le Beau-Rouen. 195 kilometres (#uaf5aaba5-0f0d-59e9-a29a-f2a51306d549)
Stage 2: Rouen-Vuillard. 260 kilometres (#u71847c49-99fa-5c07-be5a-7b6417ab860f)
Stage 3: Vuillard-Plumelec. 225 kilometres (#u7dbd707b-e12d-549e-8262-be362ff4858d)
Stage 4: Plouay-Chardin. 248 kilometres (#u31a6415f-134a-528f-ac53-6e4b47ac575c)
Stage 5: Nantes-Pradier. 210 kilometres (#u38d2f647-bdaf-55db-bc37-e2175910ea52)
Stage 6: Pradier-Bordeaux. 215 kilometres (#u68185c81-db67-5a3b-ae9c-e593338bc49f)
Stage 7: Computaparc - Individual Time Trial. 54.5 kilometres (#u8d3af2ad-d2e2-537a-87ad-b36863f5dddb)
Stage 8: Sauternes-Pau. 162 kilometres (#u05edd8b3-154d-5890-84b2-66f1dfddd5e1)
Stage 9: Pau-Luchon. 196.5 kilometres (#uf1263412-3326-56c6-bad1-990410274e82)
Stage 10: Luchon-Plateau de Boudin. 170 kilometres (#u68149ded-9402-5773-8fab-014894059036)
Stage 11: Tarascon sur Ariège-Le Cap D’Arp. 221 kilometres (#uc05d1e33-657c-5deb-abfe-cbf5cd4e61c0)
Repos (#u25cd6121-90ac-599c-b0d8-5f4dd9cab511)
Stage 12: Frontignan La Peyrade-Daumier. 196 kilometres (#u56acb1df-fe58-5a87-93d2-77cb6483dd19)
Stage 13: Valadon-Grenoble. 186.5 kilometres (#u64047aca-9e3d-5be0-b0ab-84deaac849c6)
Stage 14: Grenoble-L’Alpe D’Huez. 189 kilometres (#uaecae3a1-d05e-5b6e-8256-c9f147862d33)
Stage 15: Vizille-Gilbertville. 204 kilometres (#u69337b95-4ed9-5e8a-be7a-7cdde72798e8)
Stage 16: Gilbertville-Aix-les-Bains. 149 kilometres (#ue427125b-478d-56e0-954a-cd4d0be6f9d4)
Stage 17: Aix-les-Bains-Neuchâtel. 218.5 kilometres (#u754ef0a8-a75f-5de2-af36-12ba0a36ee51)
Stage 18: La Chaux de Fonds-Lautrec. 242 kilometres (#uce92e6b7-13af-5c0d-993d-4076cf6fee2f)
Repos: Transfer by road and rail. Lautrec-Disneyland-Paris (#ue3d4072f-4c2c-5999-a99d-a1ea05df17b0)
Stage 19: Disneyland Paris, Individual Time Trial: 63 kilometres (#u5b296d38-9034-5977-9b69-2122fc1af73a)
Stage 20: Disneyland-Paris. 149.5 kilometres (#u3540e88c-a247-5286-a639-85de78cabd9e)
Day 27. Monday (#u9bf904f4-5ae7-53b2-8e1f-07e4afd2ae3e)
October: Paris. The launch of next year’s Tour de France (#u82749049-6fff-5b27-95bd-6901009da30f)
Acknowledgements (#uf154b344-38cc-5f1f-b362-37116ab0b1ad)
Afterword (#ud01beb66-abff-5d89-a7ae-7b2cc320ccf9)
Acclaim for Freya (#ud8151193-807f-5322-9ae5-fda46a81b3c9)
CAT McCABE AND THE TOUR DE FRANCE
‘I know that your mother ran off with a cowboy from Denver,’ Django McCabe reasoned with his niece, ‘but you chasing through France after a bunch of boys on bikes – well, isn’t that taking the family tradition to new extremes?’
Cat McCabe, sunbathing, eyes closed, in her uncle’s Derbyshire garden, smiled.
It feels funny smiling with closed eyes; like you can’t really do both.
So she opened her eyes, stretched leisurely, sat up cross-legged, and picked blades of grass from her body, fingering the satisfying striations they had left on her skin.
‘Lashings of lycra!’ her elder sister Fen offered from her position under the pear tree.
‘Oily limbs a-plenty,’ connived her eldest sister Pip, suddenly cartwheeling into view.
Cat tried to look indignant but then grinned. ‘The Tour de France is the world’s most gruelling sporting event,’ she said defensively, hands on hips, to her audience. ‘It demands that its participants cycle 4,000 k in three weeks. At full speed. Up and over mountains most normal folk ski down. Day after day after day.’
‘And?’ said Django, rubbing his knees, bemoaning that the sun wasn’t doing for his arthritis what it did last year.
‘And?’ said Fen, an art historian who was much more turned on by bronze or marble renditions of Adonis than their pedal-turning doppelgangers her sister seemed so to admire.
‘And?’ said Pip courteously, more interested in perfecting her flikflaks across the lawn for her new act.
Cat McCabe regarded them sternly.
‘A Tour de France cyclist can have a lung capacity of around eight litres, a heart that can beat almost 200 times a minute at full pelt and then rest at a rate at which most people ought to be dead. They can climb five mountains in a row, descending them at up to 100 k per hour.’
‘Wow,’ said Fen with sisterly sarcasm, ‘I bet they’re really interesting people.’
‘Greg LeMond,’ countered Cat, ‘won the Tour de France in 1989 by eight seconds on the final day.’
‘Bully for him,’ Pip laughed, doing a handstand and wanting to practise her routine right the way through.
‘And that was two years after coming back from the brink of death when he was accidentally shot by his brother-in-law in a hunting accident.’
Now you’re impressed!
Fen nodded and looked impressed.
Pip executed a single-handed cartwheel and said, ‘Mister LeMond, I salute you.’
Django said, ‘Bet the bugger’s American.’
Cat confirmed that indeed he was.
‘In what other sport would you have participants called Eros? Or Bo? Or teams called BigMat or OilMe or Chicky World?’
‘Topless darts?’ Pip proposed.
‘They can also pee whilst freewheeling,’ Cat slipped in before anyone could change the subject.
‘In their shorts?’ Pip asked, quite flabbergasted.
‘Nope,’ Cat replied in a most matter-of-fact way. ‘They just whip it out, twist their pelvis, and pee as they go.’
‘So,’ said Django, ‘you’re off to France to experience a great sporting spectacle performed by superhuman athletes with great bike skills but no sense of urinary decorum?’
‘Partly,’ said Cat with dignity, ‘and because hopefully there’ll be a job at the end of it.’
Fen raised her eyebrow.
Pip regarded her youngest sister sternly.
Well aware that her sisters continued to stare at her, Cat looked out over Darley Dale and wished she had her mountain bike with her.
‘Oh, all right!’ she snapped whilst laughing and covering her face, ‘I’m not just pursuing the peloton because there’s a job at the end of it if my freelance work is good enough.’
I wish I had my bike. I could just ride and ride and be on my own.
‘You are pursuing the peloton—’ started Fen.
‘Because there’s a—’ continued Pip.
‘Hope of adventure?’ Cat tried contemplatively, still covering her face.
‘Lashings of lycra,’ Fen shrugged as if resting her case.
‘Silky smooth shaven thighs,’ Pip said in utter agreement. ‘Big ones.’
‘Over the sea and far away,’ Django mused. Everyone mused.
Cat nodded. ‘It’s time to move on,’ she said thoughtfully. Everyone agreed. No one had to say anything more.
‘I am Catriona McCabe,’ Cat muses to herself, sitting under a cedar in the grounds of Chatsworth House, not two miles from where her uncle lives and from where she was brought up when her mother ran off with a cowboy from Denver, ‘and I’m twenty-eight years old.’
And?
And I’m going to the Tour de France, with full press accreditation, to report on the race for the Guardian newspaper.
And?
If my reportage wins favour, I might land the job of Features Editor for the magazine Maillot.
Jersey?
Maillot.
And?
I’ll be sorted. And happy.
OK. But all things on two wheels aside, what else?
I’m twenty-eight.
We know.
I live in London. In Camden. In a tiny, rented one-bedroom flat with gay neighbours, a tapas bar opposite, and my two sisters near by.
We met them.
Fenella is a year older than me, Philippa two. Fen’s an art historian. Pip’s a clown. We’re close but different.
Certainly. And you’re into journalism?
Actually, I’m into cycling. The journalism part just enables me to indulge my passion.
Isn’t a passion for pedal sport rather unusual for a British female? Wouldn’t it be more common for you to be into three-day eventing? Or tennis? Or soccer, even?
Cycling is my thing. It is the most beautiful, hypnotic sport to watch. The riders are consummate athletes; so brave, so focused, so committed. My heart is in my mouth as they ride and I watch.
But how and why?
Because I.
That’s a fine sentence, Cat.
Because I was … with … a man who kindled my interest. He left. The interest didn’t.
When did he leave?
Three months ago.
A time trial indeed.
Indeed.
So France will be good.
France is my dream. France can mark a new me. France can help me heal. Can’t it?
I’m sure.
Cat was helping Django prepare supper. Though the McCabe girls visited their uncle monthly, it was rare for them all to be there at the same time. June was turning into July but with his three girls with him, Christmas had come early for Django.
‘I’m going to do a Spread,’ Django announced. For three girls whose mother had run off with a cowboy from Denver and who were brought up by a man called Django in the wilds of Derbyshire, the Spread was nothing to raise eyebrows at. For normal folk of a conventional upbringing and traditional meal times using regular foodstuffs, a Spread by Django McCabe would cause eyebrows to leave the forehead altogether.
Django McCabe is sixty-seven and, in his jeans with big buckled belts, faded Liberty shirts and trademark neckerchiefs, he looks like he should be an artist, or a jazz musician. In fact, during his lifetime, he’s dabbled in both. Twenty-five years ago, in Montmartre, he combined the two rather successfully and sparked a certain trend for neckerchiefs. But then his sister-in-law ran away with a cowboy from Denver and he had to forsake Parisian prestige for the sake of his bereft brother and three small daughters and an old draughty house in Derbyshire. The two men and the three girls lived harmoniously until their father died of a heart attack when Pip was ten years old.
The house is still draughty but Django’s warmth, and his insistence on multilayered clothing and his obsession with hot thick soup at every meal during the winter months, ensured that the McCabe girls’ childhoods were warm and healthy. They have also developed palates that are robust and tolerant. Soup at every meal throughout the winter months is one thing; that the varieties should include Chicken and Apple, Celery and Baked Beans, and Tuna Chunks with Pea and Stilton, is quite another. Luckily, it is June and there is no call for soup today.
Pip is having a rest in the back bedroom following further exertion on the lawn. Fen is sitting quietly on the window seat in the room whose name changes according to time of day and current season. On winter mornings and evenings, it is the Snug. On spring afternoons it is the Library. On weekday evenings, if the television is on, it is the Family Room. On weekday evenings if the television is off, it’s the Drawing-room. On summer afternoons, it is the Quiet Room. In mornings, it is the Morning Room. When the girls were young and naughty, it was Downstairs. Fen is in the Quiet Room which, after supper, will no doubt be the Drawing-room. Cat is in the kitchen, peeling, scrubbing, grating and chopping and being as diplomatic as possible in dissuading Django from adding Tabasco to the trout, or to the mashed potato, or to the mint and cranberry sauce.
‘It’s best in Bloody Mary,’ Cat informs him. So Django finds vodka but no tomato juice and just mixes the Tabasco in anyway.
‘Cheers!’ he says, knocking his drink back.
‘Cheers!’ Cat responds with a hearty sip only to fight back choking and tears.
‘I think I’d better name this drink, Bloody Hell, Mary,’ Django wheezes, but takes another glug regardless.
Cat nods and wonders if chopped apricots will really add much of consequence – good or bad – to the trout.
They’ll counteract the olives, I suppose.
‘So, Cat, you’ll be a good girl? You’ll be careful in France? I know all about Alain Delon and Roger Vadim.’
‘I don’t,’ Cat laughs.
‘You watch yourself,’ Django cautions, absent-mindedly pointing a knife at her and then apologizing profusely.
‘I’ll be fine,’ Cat assures him, ‘I’m in the press corps. There’ll be 900 journalists. The Tour is a movable town, a veritable community. I’m in it for the ride, for the duration.’
I’ll be safe.
‘You look after yourself,’ Django repeats, thinking a dash of stout might be welcomed by the mashed potato.
‘That’s precisely what I’m doing,’ Cat says pensively.
The Spread ready, the four McCabes assemble. They stand by their places and look from one to the other in silence. Django gives the nod and they sit. And eat. He’s all for picking and dipping and having a taste of this, a soupçon of that. So arms stretch amiably and serving spoons chink and dollop. There’s much too much food but whatever’s left will be blended together tomorrow, liquidized the next day and then frozen, to reappear as soup in some not-too-distant colder time.
In the Drawing-room, over coffee and some dusty but undamaged After Eights which Pip discovered in her bedside table, Django looked to his three nieces. Fen looked wistful as ever, her blonde hair scrunched into a wispy pony-tail which made her look young and vulnerable and like she should be living at home. Django noticed that she was visibly thinner than when he saw her at Easter and knew that this could be attributed to one of two things.
‘Love or money, Fen?’ he asked.
She jolted and looked at each of her palms as if assessing the merits of telling him one thing or another.
‘Both,’ she said, folding her hands in her lap.
‘Has he too much or too little?’ Django enquired.
‘It depends,’ said Fen.
Django looked puzzled. Cat couldn’t resist. ‘One is loaded and the other is broke.’
‘Good God, girl!’ Django exclaimed in honest horror, much to Cat and Pip’s delight. ‘Two of them?’
‘Who is it to be?’ Cat asked Fen. ‘Have you decided yet? The old or the young?’
‘Who’s the one?’ Pip pushed. ‘The rich or the poor? Did you toss for it or did they have a duel?’
‘Neither,’ Fen wailed. ‘Both.’ She looked out of the window, unable to decipher the night from the moor, or the merits of one love from the other. Django, Cat and Pip gazed at her for a moment.
‘Pip,’ Django said sternly, ‘love or money?’
‘I can live most comfortably without either,’ said Pip, secretly wishing she had just a little of each.
‘Well, a pink afro wig, copious amounts of face paint and an alter ego called Martha the Clown can’t help,’ Django reasoned.
‘I.e., get a proper job,’ Pip groaned to Fen whilst ignoring Django. Django turned to Cat who was staring out of the window and way into the night. Her green-grey eyes glinting with the effort of uninvited memories, her sand-blonde hair suddenly framing her face and dripping down over drooping shoulders, her lips parted as if preparing for words she’d never said and wished she had. She looked distant. And sad.
‘She’s in France already,’ Fen whispered to Django, secretly worried that Cat should not be going on her own.
‘Best place for her,’ Pip colluded, secretly pleased that Cat was guaranteed time alone and away.
‘Cat?’ Django called softly. Cat blinked, yawned and smiled, hoping it would deflect attention from the obvious effort of pulling on a brave face at that time of night.
‘Mario Cipollini’s thighs have a circumference of 80 centimetres,’ she told them.
I could hear them, my sisters. And they’re right – I am in France, sort of. And I wonder if I shouldn’t go. I mean, if I stay, maybe He will pop round some time over the next three weeks. Say he wants to change his mind but I’m not here? Might he come back? And say sorry?
As if.
No no.
That’s over. Move on, Cat.
But he might.
No, I don’t think he will.
How can he love me and then not? And in the same day too?
‘I love you,’ he said in a rare phone call from work that morning. ‘I’m leaving,’ he said, as so often he did, later that night. ‘So go then,’ I said, thinking if I stood up to him it would give him the reality check he needed. ‘Go then,’ I said, presuming he’d stand stock still in horror, sweep me off my feet and cry, ‘Never never never.’
Instead?
He went. He ran.
Three months since.
And I cannot bring him back. Yet I left the door metaphorically wide open, hoping he’d come back and bang on it, proclaiming, ‘I want to be here with you. Always. What can I do, sweet love?’
So now I think I regret what I did. But they all tell me not to.
The door’s still ajar. Soon I’m going to have to shut it. For my safety and my sanity. Let go.
I don’t want to. Won’t letting go be just that – letting go?
Giving up? Admitting failure? Admitting that it is really, truly over?
And if I let go, am I not saying that I relinquish my hope? Because who am I, Cat McCabe, without my hope?
France. Le Tour de France. La Grande Boucle. A dream I’ve had for five years. He was a dream I had for five years – at least this is one I can make come true, all the way to the Paris finale. I will follow the Tour de France, become a part of this fantastic travelling family. From start to finish. All the way, over the flat lands, over the Pyrenees and Alps, through the vineyards and home to the Champs-Elysées. Me and my heroes. Fabian Ducasse. Vasily Jawlensky. Luca Jones.
You can keep your Brad Pitts and Tom Cruises. You can even keep your George Clooneys. If you want a hero, choose anyone from the Système Vipère or Zucca MV teams. Brad and Tom couldn’t do a fraction of the twenty-one hairpin bends on L’Alpe D’Huez. Mr Clooney wouldn’t dare descend a mountain with the grace and speed of a peregrine falcon in full plummet.
Bollocks! What on earth has got into me? I mean, I know I have to move on now – but fantasizing about professional cyclists is not only unrealistic, it’s daft and it could be detrimental. Exactly. I’m a professional journalist about to infiltrate a male-dominated world. Not a groupie. Even if I was a groupie, why would they look at me? Put me next to a podium girl with their lips and their legs and their kisses and mini skirts, and I rest my case.
Exactly.
Anyway, the riders are mostly in bed by nine.
And I read something somewhere that hours in the saddle means impotence in the sack.
Only one way to verify that, I suppose.
Cat McCabe!
I meant, talking to the riders’ wives and girlfriends.
When Cat arrived home from Derbyshire, her neighbours had left a note inviting her upstairs for a snack and a chat. Eric and Jim (whose fifth anniversary that weekend Cat had missed for Django’s Spread) saw Cat’s emotional and physical welfare as their responsibility. They were positively parental though they were, in fact, but a year or two older than her. When she had food poisoning, they brought her tonic water and the bucket. When her flat was broken in to, they insisted she slept on their sofabed. When He left, they brought her ice-cream and comfort. They were almost as excited by France and the notion that an adventure and a change of scenery would work wonders for Cat, as they were by the thought of one hundred and eighty-nine amply muscled men in lycra shorts.
‘We have a present for you,’ Eric said. ‘We wanted to give it to you before you leave on Wednesday – by the way, if it doesn’t start till Saturday, why are you going so early?’
‘Because I have to organize my accreditation and then during Thursday and Friday there are press conferences, team by team,’ Cat explained, ‘and stuff.’
‘Are you excited?’ Jim asked, because he was. ‘Aren’t you nervous?’
‘I’m very both,’ said Cat. ‘If that’s a sentence.’
‘You’re vulnerable,’ Jim warned her. ‘Don’t expect too much from France. I know it’s a goal that’s kept you going, but don’t expect too much.’
‘And don’t go on the rebound,’ Eric added, wagging his finger. ‘I mean, those riders are considered gods, rock stars, over there, aren’t they?’
‘I think what he’s trying to say,’ said Jim, ‘is that if you’re to go on the rebound – which we sincerely hope you will – a professional cyclist might not be the most suitable participant.’
‘I mean,’ said Eric, ‘just imagine the effect of a night of non-stop debauchery – the poor sod will be too knackered to turn the pedals the next day.’
They all imagined it quietly for a moment and then burst out laughing.
‘Which somewhat makes a mockery of our gift,’ Eric then continued. ‘Here. It’s your survival kit.’
They handed Cat a shoebox. She lifted the lid, twitched her brow and then laughed as she fingered through the contents.
‘Condoms?’ she exclaimed, while Jim shrugged and Eric looked out the window.
‘Bic razors?’ she asked, counting four.
‘We weren’t sure if they use Immac on their legs,’ said Jim.
‘And there’s nothing quite like being shaved by someone you fancy,’ Eric furthered.
‘And there’s a lot of leg on some of those boys,’ Jim reasoned.
‘So am I to suppose that this bumper-sized bottle of baby oil is for after shave and not for me?’ Cat asked to meek smiles apiece from the two men.
‘Why do they shave their legs?’ Eric asked.
‘To show off their tans and muscles,’ Jim cooed.
‘Aerodynamics?’ Eric pressed.
‘Or just a tradition that I, for one, sincerely hope will continue,’ Jim said breathlessly.
‘Road rash,’ said Cat, most matter-of-fact.
‘Eh?’ said Eric.
‘If they crash or fall,’ Cat explained, ‘it’s easier to clean cuts and grazes on smooth skin.’
Jim looked most disappointed with this information. Cat returned her attention to the shoebox. ‘Vaseline?’
‘We read somewhere that it gives them a, um, more comfortable ride,’ Jim said ingenuously.
‘Not that we’re suggesting you offer to apply it,’ Eric rushed. Cat raised her eyebrows and held up a wildly patterned bandanna.
‘They all wear them,’ Eric said, ‘we saw them on the TV last year.’
‘Extra strong mints,’ Cat said, taking the packet to her nose.
‘For any, er, passing horses,’ Eric said.
‘I’m frightened of horses,’ Cat said.
‘You can befriend them with the mints,’ Jim said.
‘And that’s why you’ve included them?’ Cat pressed with a wry smile. ‘Not because I’m going to a country where you have meals with your garlic?’ They smiled back at her. Wryly.
Plasters. Antiseptic. A hundred-franc note. A packet of energy bars.
‘We’ll follow your progress in the Guardian,’ Eric said.
‘It’ll be good,’ Jim assured her with a squeeze, ‘you’ll be fine.’
I wonder who’ll end up in the yellow jersey? Cat ponders, sitting up in bed with current copies of Marie Claire and Procycling to hand. It’ll either be Fabian Ducasse or Vasily Jawlensky and I love them both equally but for different reasons. Fabian is stunning in looks and riding, his arrogance is compelling. He exudes testosterone – hopefully in doses that are natural and not administered. Vasily is fantastically handsome too but he really is inscrutable – an enigma. Who do I want to see in the maillot jaune? I don’t know. May the best man win.
And the polka dot jersey for King of the Mountains? I’d put my money on Vasily’s team-mate, the personable and rather gorgeous Massimo Lipari; the media’s dream and a million housewives’ darling. I’d like him to make it his hat trick though he’ll have to watch out for his Système Vipère rival, the diminutive but charismatic Carlos Jesu Velasquez.
And the green jersey? For points? Can Stefano Sassetta take it back from Jesper Lomers this year?
Then there’s the American team, Megapac – Tour virgins, just like me. Maybe I’ll try for some exclusives. I’d love to meet Luca Jones – he seems to typify the international camaraderie of the peloton, living in Italy, riding for Great Britain and racing for an American pro team. He’s meant to be something of a character – but when you’re that pleasing on the eye, it would be a disappointment not to be.
God, I wish I could speak Spanish or Italian. My French is crap. I should have studied harder for Mamzelle at school instead of – how did she phrase it? ‘Day-dreaming won’t get you a job, O levels will.’
But actually, I’ve day-dreamt about following the Tour de France for years. And now it’s my job to do it.
JULES LE GRAND AND TEAM SYSTEME VIPERE
Swarthy, handsome, smelling of Calvin Klein scent and looking very much like someone who might well advertise their wares if he weren’t a professional cyclist, Fabian Ducasse strolled through his luxurious Brittany apartment and put a George Michael CD into his Système Vipère mega micro hi-fi station.
‘If I rode for the Casino team, ha! I would have only a discount in the sponsor’s supermarket chain!’ he laughed out loud. ‘Or a new vacuum cleaner if I was with Team Polti. If I was with Riso Scotti, I could have all the rice I could eat – so, Système Vipère suits me.’ He turned up the volume, reclined his six-foot and twenty-nine-year-old frame on to a leather sofa and listened to George Michael singing about Faith.
Faith. That’s what I got to have. Got to win the race or no more super hi-fi for Fabian. Must win. Must conquer. Must blast away any challenge. The maillot jaune must be mine.
‘Hey, but if I ride for O.N.C.E. or Banesto, I could open accounts with the banks themselves and they could invest all my money and make it even bigger!’ He slipped his hand down his tracksuit trousers and grabbed his cock. ‘Jawlensky? What can Zucca MV give him but building materials? He has a house, so what can he do with more bricks? You can’t listen to a brick. A brick doesn’t look cool in the lounge.’
With his hand coaxing and rewarding his erection, Fabian walked over to the window and gazed down on the women sipping coffee in the terrace cafés below.
‘In four days, the Tour starts. I must win it this year. I should not have let it go last year. I do not like it that this year I am to be categorized “The Pretender”. In four days, my future starts again.’
Jawlensky? He took yellow last year only because I wasn’t at 100 per cent after that bug. This year is pay back. No one has the maillot jaune but Fabian.
One of the women looked up from her café au lait. She was blonde and beautiful and he’d seen her before.
‘Four days until the Tour. Bien. I need coffee. Caffeine is good. And it tastes better when sipped alongside a beautiful woman.’
He made a phone call. ‘Hélène? You can get away? Coffee?’ His girlfriend of three weeks reminded him that she was at work, in the next town, so he would have to be content that she was having to be content with coffee from the vending machine. Fabian shrugged as he hung up. He went down in to the square and had coffee and an ego-massage by the blonde woman whose name he asked but forgot immediately. He felt incredibly horny. But he forgot that too because he wanted to do 80 kilometres on his bike. Fast.
‘Fabian?’ Jules Le Grand, Système Vipère’s directeur sportif, phones his team leader from his mobile phone whilst walking across town from appointment to appointment. A suave man of forty-seven, with an impressive shock of well-styled grey hair, a pair of fabulously expensive gold-rimmed spectacles, a discerning penchant for meticulously designed suits and an almost uncontrollable fondness for exquisite calf-skin loafers, Jules Le Grand would almost look more at home in the offices of a Parisian couturier than amongst the chain grease, muscle embrocation and general blood and sweat that accompanies his job on a daily basis.
Cyclisme is my life, my passion – but why compromise on style? It is not necessary. Only lazy. Laziness is anathema, the enemy, in all to do with cycling, in all to do with life. In that order – compris?
With a phenomenal amount to organize, check and double-check in the rapidly diminishing days, hours, prior to the Tour, the mobile phone, in Jules’s mind, is as great an invention of the modern age as the carbon-fibre bicycle frame.
‘Fabian?’ Jules checks his watch and allows himself the rare luxury of making the call at a standstill.
With a white towel, shorter than necessary (but that was the point entirely) wrapped around his waist, Fabian crooks the phone under his neck whilst trying to figure out the lesser of two evils – to drip on his cream rug or on his fine wood floor. He is going to have to do one or the other because he couldn’t possibly tell his directeur that now isn’t a convenient time.
The Tour de France is not just about cycling your way to Paris, but to the next season also. It’s where contracts are confirmed. I must behave on and off my bike, before and during the race.
‘Jules,’ Fabian says warmly, ‘ça va? I have just done a good ride. I have pasta boiling.’
Shit! I made it sound like he is inconveniencing me.
‘I wanted to talk to you before team dinner tonight,’ Jules continues. ‘About next year. About you and Système Vipère. How is your stereo?’
As head of this company, negotiation is my forte. Or one of my many. As directeur sportif, it is my business to know what makes my riders click.
Fabian hops lightly from rug to floorboard, grins at his stereo and grimaces at the two damp indentations of his feet that appear to be indelibly imprinted on his luxurious rug.
‘My stereo is great – I hardly ever have it off. Listen.’ Fabian holds the telephone receiver out into the centre of the room, presuming his directeur can hear Prince. Jules can’t but he holds his receiver patiently, checking the battery level and signal strength, until Fabian decides to return to his. ‘Did you hear?’ Fabian asks. ‘Système Vipère is my life – on the bike and off. At all times, I am a Viper Boy.’
That’s good – yeah! Jules will like that – a strong commitment that is far more than just a job for me.
‘If you like,’ Jules says, ‘you can have a new stereo. That is, if you stay with us next year.’
The stereo was tempting enough, but Fabian knows it is worthless without a salary to echo, in his mind anyway, his value for the team.
I’ll stay silent.
‘Plus, of course,’ Jules furthers with elaborate sincerity, Fabian’s unsophisticated business strategy making him smile, ‘a substantial increase in salary. How would it feel to be the highest paid rider in the peloton?’
How does it feel? Fabian pondered moments later, staring at the replaced handset, glowering at his footprints on wood, glaring at the marks still defiant on the rug. It feels fucking great. I feel like fucking. See, it has made me hard.
But the Tour de France starts in four days. Shouldn’t you save your energy? Celibacy is team policy. Jules is fairly firm on where he stands on sex.
Fairly firm – ha! From where I stand, I am downright hard. I know my body. In bed. On a bike. No problem.
‘Fabian, Fabian,’ Jules cooed triumphantly, checking his messages and finding four were left during the call to his key rider. Before responding to any of them, he phoned the team’s sponsors.
‘Bien,’ Jules told them, ‘no problem with Fabian – unless Zucca MV try to sabotage him with a hundred blow jobs.’
‘And Jesper Lomers?’ they demanded to know. ‘Has he signed?’
‘Jesper will not be a problem,’ Jules assured them.
It’s his bloody wife who will cause trouble, Jules hissed to himself as he listened to yet another message left during his call. All wives are bloody – I’ve had three, I should know. Maybe Jesper would function better with a mistress – I certainly do.
I can focus all my attention on the team, Jules mused, and yet have a woman, at my behest, focus all her attention on me. Perfect!
His phone rang. It was one of the team mechanics. Jules listened, said, ‘Spinergy wheels of course – imbécile,’ and hung up. The phone rang again. It was the French sports newspaper L’Equipe. ‘Système Vipère are supreme at the moment,’ Jules quoted with bravado, ‘Ducasse, Lomers and Velasquez – they will be beautiful to watch. On paper, it is the toughest Tour for a long time, but the Vipers’ strength will be like venom to all other riders. You can quote me.’ He hung up.
Jules tried Jesper Lomers. No reply.
But no reply is good – it means he is training. And no reply is better than Anya answering the phone. Irritating female – she sees Système Vipère as the ‘other woman’. Would Jesper be happy if he was not racing? Would he be a good husband then? She thinks it is she who makes him happy, fulfilled, loved. I know it is Système Vipère. Luckily, I don’t think Jesper gives the theory much thought at all. I’ll try him again. No reply. Good. Later.
The phone rang again. It was a young rider. ‘If you have diarrhoea,’ Jules said patiently, ‘what must you eat? That’s right, hard-boiled eggs, rice and live yoghurt. How much water did you take? That’s not enough. We’ll put you on electrolytes tonight.’ He hung up and laughed.
Directeur sportif? Call me père des coureurs – am I a trainer, a manager or papa?
‘That is why I am strict, a bastard,’ Jules muttered, temporarily changing his pace to a stroll. ‘I can shout at a rider in the morning, yell at him from the car during a race, yet by the evening, when he has finished, he is desperate for my embrace. I have to be a father figure to my racers for it is essential that they trust me and crave my approval through their excellence. Why else would they ride? Fabian only for money? Jesper only for his wife’s love? Get real.’
Jules marched purposefully across the place to the restaurant he had granted the accolade of hosting that year’s pre-Tour team dinner. In the town of Eustace St Pierre, it was an honour that all restaurants strove for each year. The proprietors wanted to pamper Jules with complimentary drinks, some fish soup, tarte tatin. Jules refused. He was there to check on the menu and arrange the seating plan. Busy. Too busy to eat or socialize, no time for pleasantries at all really.
The Tour de France is on Jules’s mind 365 days a year. And because of this, his popularity never suffers. The Tour defines a Frenchman’s calendar – for Jules Le Grand to be so unwaveringly committed to it sets him up as a hero amongst his countrymen. The Tour de France preoccupies Jules throughout the season, even when it is still months away. Paris–Nice, Tirreno–Adriatico, Catalan Week, Criterium International, Liège–Bastogne–Liège, the Dauphiné Libéré. Though each race, revered enough in its own right, is given focused dedication, Jules thinks of them all as but preparation for the great one. The Tour de France is always on the tip of his tongue, behind the sparkle in his eye, ever simmering in his mind. The Tour commands his every thought, awake or asleep. Strategy becomes all-consuming.
Directeur sportif? I am a brilliant tactician.
Tonight’s strategy was for no strategy to be discussed and yet the very purpose of the evening was utterly strategic – team bonding and last mouthfuls of haute cuisine before all vestiges of normal life were relinquished to the clutch and drive of the Tour, to pasta at every single meal, to conversation, dream, thought, breath, devoted exclusively to the race.
More than father to the riders, more than director of a small company whose location changes on almost a daily basis, more than diplomat, or supreme strategist – ultimately I am an army general. The Tour de France is not just about teams of riders going to war against each other; frequently the most severe battle for a rider is an individual one with his own self-belief. I must try Jesper again. That is why I must get to Jesper.
‘Hey!’ Fabian drawls when he arrives at the restaurant and sits himself down, ‘it’s our Super Sprinter, the Blond Bomb, the Rotterdam Rocket – you’re looking good!’
The compliment, laced with sarcasm, is directed at Jesper Lomers. The Dutchman regards Fabian with a smile and a shake of his head to conceal any hint of embarrassment. Fabian lifts a lock of Jesper’s hair. It is very blond, like straw, but soft, a little spiky here, charmingly floppy there.
‘That crazy magazine,’ Fabian remarks, referring to a recent adulatory article in Italian Vogue in which he and Jesper were featured, ‘they’ll be mourning when your hair is shorn within an inch of your scalp for the Tour. What was it that they wrote about your legs?’
Jesper waves his hand dismissively and busies himself tearing open a bread roll, buttering it well, yet not eating it.
This is good, Jules thinks, humour, laughter, the team is reacting well.
He answers on Jesper’s behalf. ‘The article said – team, listen up – Jesper Lomers has the most beautiful thighs in the peloton.’
The team fell about laughing.
Jesper shrugs. ‘They’re the tools of my trade, guys, the tools of my trade. I’m a good rider – not a sex symbol.’
‘Where’s the problem in being both,’ Fabian comments, knowing his own blend is consummate.
‘Anya would beg to differ, I’m sure,’ chips in a team member.
‘Anya wants to go back to Holland,’ Jesper says to everyone but looking steadily at Jules.
‘And we want the green jersey,’ Jules responds, holding the eye contact whilst aware and pleased that the restaurant saw fit to serve him first, ‘and we want you, Jesper, to win it for us again this year.’ He regards his rider, one of the most consistent he has ever known. ‘The maillot vert is yours. You can take it again, your riding warrants it.’ Jules knows he can keep Fabian – a little flattery, a lot of money. Jesper he is not so sure about and it unnerves him.
I’ve never known a rider who can win so spectacularly but with such good grace. Nor have I known a rider so keen to kiss his wife whenever she’s at the start or the finish. Increasingly, though, she’s been at neither. It unnerves Jesper, I know. She wants to go home. And that unnerves me. Jesper must stay. She has plans. But so do I.
‘That’s why no wives,’ Jules, musing to himself over the three he’d regrettably suffered, proclaims. Luckily, Jesper is preoccupied dunking his bread into the soup like a tea bag and appears not to have heard, let alone taken offence. A couple of the other riders, however, shoot blade-sharp looks at their directeur. When they are sure he isn’t looking.
‘I ride better if I sleep better and I sleep well when I share with my wife,’ says one under his breath.
‘Vraiment,’ agrees the other. ‘I need a bed-mate on the Tour, not a room-mate. No offence.’
‘None taken,’ his team-mate confirms. ‘So, are we rooming again, this Tour?’
‘I would think so,’ the other shrugs. ‘I’ve requested it.’
‘So have I.’
‘You nervous?’ his team-mate asks, despite knowing it is a question that will never be answered directly.
‘You?’
Clever but fairly standard answer.
‘No Weakness,’ the rider proclaims as if it is some mantra.
‘Précisément!’ The team-mates, soon to be room-mates in lieu of their female bed- and soul-mates, chink glasses and drink the red wine as if it is nectar.
‘Jules, where’s Carlos?’
‘A Spaniard riding for a French team is a coup enough,’ Fabian interjects, touching his nose as if it is out of joint. ‘Can we really expect him to turn up any earlier than the last minute, for something as trivial as a team meal?’
Before Jules can answer on Carlos’s behalf, the waiters arrive with miniature portions of sorbet which everyone samples but, being tomato and basil sorbet (of which, undoubtedly, Django McCabe would have been proud), no one much likes.
Jules raises his glass of Burgundy. ‘Here’s to the jerseys. And they are most definitely plural. The yellow. The green. The polka dot. Fabian. Jesper. Carlos. Here’s to Système Vipère. Salut.’
‘Vive le Tour,’ says Fabian, gulping wine and then tucking into duck.
‘Vive le Tour,’ says Jesper, thinking of Anya, wishing she were here and apprehensive about a certain coldness that will greet him at home that night.
Carlos Jesu Velasquez had no compunction at being absent from the team dinner in France.
‘I am to spend over three weeks in your country so that night I will dine with my wife,’ he had said to Jules previously by telephone.
He must feel special, Jules had reasoned to himself, so I will make it seem a gesture of my respect that he needn’t be present for the dinner. Realistically, he would not add much in the way of scintillating conversation to the evening. In truth, it is not important to the team or the Tour whether he eats escargots with us or paella with his family.
Carlos Jesu Velasquez is nicknamed the Pocket Rocket, like the energy bars of that name which the riders carry with them, on account of his small stature but enormous potency. Carlos Jesu is also known as the Cicada for he speaks little. He speaks no other language than Spanish but even amongst the Spanish riders he is frugal with communication. He uses his tongue and his lips to address the peloton, hissing or clicking at riders to move away, to work with him, to get out of his line. Carlos is also known as the Little Lion, for when the little climber wins at a mountain finish he lets out a guttural roar utterly inconsistent with his diminutive size and quiet mien. His wife, Marie-Christina, however, calls him Jesu with a throatily pronounced ‘h’. His three children call him Papa.
This evening, he walked his three children across the street to his mother-in-law’s. He then went back to his house, closed the door and made love to Marie-Christina. Then he sang to her. Tomorrow, he will travel to Eustace St Pierre.
‘Away on business,’ he whispers soothingly to his wife, ‘but home again soon.’
If I were to meet the inimitable Fabian Ducasse, what exactly would I say? Cat wondered, on her way in to the Guardian office to discuss their requirements and other practicalities.
He’s famed as a womanizer, so should I concede that he might be more willing to talk, to grant me an audience, if I wore a skirt? I’d have to think of a slant – not just ‘Are you going to win the Tour de France, Monsieur Ducasse?’ Perhaps I could ask him about sport and adulation – would he do it if he didn’t get it? I want to tap in to that arrogance to see if it’s a front or genuine. Not that I care which – it has the desired effect on me for one.
Is there time to learn a little Spanish? Mind you, just a grunt from Carlos Jesu Velasquez would suffice. And how about Jesper? Is there anything that comes close to hearing English spoken with a Dutch accent?
I can’t believe I’m soon to be there. In France. With them. What’ll I say?
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