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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.