The McCabe Girls Complete Collection: Cat, Fen, Pip, Home Truths

‘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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