by Freya North
Jesper, however, hardly clocked Stefano’s presence; the unexpected sight of his wife had him transfixed. The Dutch riders with whom he had been sitting and chatting quite affably forgave him his sudden silence and abrupt departure.
‘Hullo, Jesper,’ said Anya after they had stood very close and stared silently for a few moments.
‘Great ears,’ said Jesper, giving her Mickey Mouse headpiece a gentle flick.
‘Yours too,’ Anya said politely before scrutinizing some fascinating aspect of her footwear.
‘I’m sorry that you don’t see me in the maillot vert,’ said Jesper, gravely apologetic.
‘I am sorry for you that you have it no longer,’ Anya said honestly.
‘Ach,’ Jesper shrugged with equanimity, ‘I had it last year – but I believe I will win it for the Vipers next year.’
How the words hung, loaded and huge, as if physically there, on vast placards suspended from the clouds, emphatically and unavoidably legible. Jesus, the relief. Suddenly Jesper knew unequivocally where he would be on this day next year, even what he’d be wearing. It was as if he’d been granted some divine flash of the future and to abuse it, to do anything other than travel towards it, would be a sacrilegious travesty. And suddenly Anya knew exactly where her husband of today would be this time next year. And there was nothing she was going to do about it because there was nothing she actually wanted to do about it. She had no idea where she’d be in 365 days hence, but she knew that she would not be here, in a village of the Tour de France.
And so Jesper Lomers stands silent and still and solitary in the centre of the village while around him, journalists and guests and officials and a host of Disney characters mill about in high spirits. He watches Anya, his soon-to-be-ex-wife, walk away, her Mickey Mouse ears still in place, as are his. It is the penultimate day of this year’s Tour de France. He has lost the maillot vert and he has lost his marriage. And yet, he has his health, his sanity and the priceless aptitude of knowing exactly what he wants to do with his life. What he lacks in happiness at this stage, he gains in a sense of peace.
Fabian Ducasse feels calm in that his thoughts are collected. He is not at peace though. His body is surging with anticipatory determination, adrenalin is pumping through his system. He is 1 minute 33 seconds from Vasily Jawlensky’s yellow jersey. Both he and his rival are very strong Time Trialists; Fabian will ride with the extra spurt that ruthless desire and extreme ambition can instil, Vasily has the extra strength exuded by his golden fleece. Fabian Ducasse is capable of wiping minutes off other riders on today’s Time Trial course. Vasily Jawlensky is capable of not losing a second.
Cat, Josh and Alex drove the course in a convoy of four press cars following the team car, hollering, ‘Allez! Allez! Allez!’ at the Cofidis rider David Millar. The young Brit stormed the course and took the lead which he was still holding with only two men left to ride. Unfortunately, the men in question were Fabian Ducasse and Vasily Jawlensky; dressed for action in their skinsuits, equipped for battle on their aerodynamic machines, prepared to plunder every ounce of their physical and emotional reserves.
Minnie Mouse McCabe was an exception to the rule amongst the press corps, today slogging out the words in an overheated room in a Disneyland hotel. With her hair washed regularly and skin bathed daily over the past three weeks, she looked nearly as fresh today as when the Tour started. The majority of hacks, however, had now resigned themselves to items of clothing which, whilst far from clean, at least were not amongst those fermenting at the bottoms of suitcases. The accumulation of three weeks of strong salami and Seize virtually on tap could be seen in expanded girths and heard in copious belching. Nicotine had stained fingers and teeth. Chins looked grimy – most razor blades having been well blunted since around Stage 16. Though noticeably weary over the past few Stages, today the salle de pressé sat riveted by the action of the Time Trial relayed to them on the screens.
They watched Ducasse fly through the first checkpoint, swiping 34 seconds off David Millar’s time there. At the second checkpoint Fabian’s time was 42 seconds faster than Millar. He swept past Massimo Lipari who had started three minutes before him before storming through the final time-check now 1 minute and 11 seconds clear of David Millar. Hunter Dean, who started two men before Fabian, was staggered to find himself being overtaken by Ducasse. Système Vipère’s great rider sprinted for the line. He’d completed the course in a phenomenal 1 hour, 15 minutes and 54 seconds and looked fresh and strong enough to ride the entire 63 kilometres again.
Vasily Jawlensky zipped through the first time-check a second faster than Ducasse. His fluid rhythm, comfortable position, his potent and fresh legs could have seen him swallow seconds with every kilometre. Only he punctured just before the second time-check. It was horrendous bad luck and, though the wheel change had been executed with military efficiency, he forfeited twenty-one seconds to Fabian. Nothing could have foretold nor prevented the unbelievable misfortune of a second puncture 6 kilometres later. This time, the wheel change, though fast, was not smooth and though Vasily willed the bike to perform, something jammed and he skidded to the ground. He flung thousands of dollars’ worth of hi-tech machine on to the grass verge and had no option but to resort to a regular road bike for the last 28 kilometres. By the final time-check and with 15 kilometres still to go, he was 59 seconds slower than Ducasse. Though he rode for all he was worth, forcing his body to fold to the ultimate aerodynamic pose, to rebuff the drag of the headwind, to slight the technical demands of the small towns en route, Vasily crossed the line 1 minute and 2 seconds behind Fabian Ducasse.
The salle de pressé roared, some in triumph for Fabian, others in sympathy for Vasily, all in reaction to superb bike riding. Cat looked contemplatively at her screen before answering an expected call from her sisters.
‘If tomorrow goes smoothly,’ she told them, ‘Vasily Jawlensky will win this year’s Tour de France. If a mishap befalls him – punctures, a crash – Fabian might just take the maillot jaune. You can never discount the danger of the unexpected.’
‘Who do you think will win?’ Fen asked.
‘Who do you want to win?’ Pip rushed before Cat had answered.
‘The thing is,’ Cat mused thoughtfully, ‘I’d be happy for either rider to win and will mourn for the man who comes second. I’m going to cry tomorrow regardless. Probably throughout the day.’
Pip and Fen had already made a note to have a box of tissues at the ready, alongside the bottle of champagne already chilling in Fen’s fridge.
‘I can’t believe tomorrow is tomorrow,’ Cat wailed out loud in the salle de pressé, ‘that it will conclude my Tour de France. That the day after tomorrow, I’ll be back in England.’
‘You didn’t say ‘home’.
I can’t really.
Are you deluding yourself?
I’ve never felt so at home as I have here, within this moving world, over these past three weeks. I’m exhausted. But look what’s happened to me, see how I’ve changed, grown.
Good for you, Cat. Well done.
‘Fabian is thirty-one seconds behind you,’ said Rachel, peeling the skinsuit off Vasily Jawlensky, ‘he will not be able to make up thirty-two seconds tomorrow. You are the maillot jaune and I’m so proud of you.’ Vasily looked at his soigneur, and saw straight to the softness she liked to believe her wiry exterior hid from view. Rachel McEwen was one of the most important people in his life. He could not conceive of riding the Tour de France, any race in fact, without her.
Rachel handed her naked rider a pair of tracksuit bottoms and fresh socks. As he took them, their hands brushed and instantaneously their eyes were locked. Vasily made to kiss her and for a suspended moment, Rachel felt her lips yield. But she turned her head consciously and Vasily’s mouth touched down on her cheek. His lips parted and confusion swept across his face. Rachel tried to smile kindly. A swift soft sadness clouded his eyes momentarily. He tipped his head to one side. Rachel shook her head, making the
gesture meek and small. Vasily physically pulled his body taller by an inch or two.
‘Thank you, Rachel,’ he said huskily, ‘for all that you do for me.’
‘Hey,’ said Rachel softly but lightly, ‘I’m only doing my job.’
She watched her rider leave. It was the closest she had come to seeing true emotion in the man. Not that she knew it, it was the closest anyone had come.
Strong. Solitary. Enigmatic.
‘Makes me sad,’ Rachel said quietly to herself, ‘for him and for the women he will never allow himself.’
Fabian’s efforts pleased him on an objective level – it was the best Time Trial he had ever ridden – but frustrated him supremely on an emotional level.
It is still not enough to win the Tour de France.
He couldn’t believe it. Reality dawned and he awoke to it as if trapped in a terrible dream.
Last year I said next year. This year I must now say next year. Next year. Le Tour de France. Le maillot jaune. Fabian Ducasse.
‘André!’ he called down to the mechanic in the hotel car park. André looked up and smiled. Fabian saw that Jules Le Grand was walking towards a team car. ‘When you go to fuck the Zucca soigneur, sabotage their bikes, hey?’
Jules Le Grand jerked his head. He knew the sabotage part was a joke. But to confirm his suspicions that his mechanic was indeed involved with the soigneur of his rival team he found to be no laughing matter.
When André made love tenderly with Rachel later and for a leisurely, mutually gratifying hour and a half, he murmured her name as he came. At much the same time but for a fraction of the duration, Fabian was fucking some fan he had found loitering in the foyer when he went there expressly to prowl. He said nothing when he came. There wasn’t anything to say. He hadn’t asked her name. Actually, he had. But he hadn’t listened to what she had said.
STAGE 20
Disneyland-Paris. 149.5 kilometres
We’re getting there, all of us who’ve experienced this Tour de France on whichever level. We’re almost in Paris, the finish line is 149.5 kilometres away. We just have to leave Euro Disney, travel up to Barcy, turn left, drop down, turn right and keep going due west until the outskirts of the exquisite city are upon us. Then we’ll head for the hallowed cobbles of the Champs-Elysées, the most beautiful avenue in the world, where the Tour de France has had its grande finale since 1975.
Enter the circuit at the Avenue du Général Lemonnier, race alongside the Tuileries gardens, dash over the Place de la Concorde, whoosh up the Champs-Elysées to the Place Charles de Gaulle, curve round, pelt down the Champs-Elysées, back through the Place de la Concorde, along the Quai des Tuileries before turning to race the 6.5 kilometre lap another nine times. Having already covered 86.5 kilometres. Having previously raced 3,696.8 kilometres.
Cat almost couldn’t bear to go to the last village, having had a lump in her throat since breakfasting with Josh and Alex that morning. A huge Mickey Mouse hot air balloon smiled inanely over the proceedings and Cat wandered about the village trying to absorb absolutely everything for posterity, to concentrate on the infuriating jingles in a bid to lighten the profound emotion enveloping her. She saw the pretty girls at the Coca-Cola marquee crying and hugging all the lithe bronzed Italian domestiques who had visited each morning over the past three weeks. She noted how the population of the village had swelled with the arrival of wives, girlfriends and families and she regarded them enviously but also with a certain satisfaction.
I’ve had the boys for three whole weeks. I’ve experienced it with them. From Vuillard to Le Cap D’Arp, from Valadon to Aix-les-Bains. I’ve shared their Tour in real time and at first hand.
Having said, ‘Enjoy’, as she had done recently to riders whom she now knew, and happy for them that finally today they could indeed do so, Cat drove the 30 kilometre itinéraire direct with a quiet Josh and a subdued Alex. Paris. L’arrivée. A staggering and rather unnerving contrast suddenly completing her three weeks with the peloton. She was used to the Tour de France being the largest entity, the centre of attention, in the places it had visited, enveloping the towns, the landscape and being welcomed and treated like some mammoth VIP. In Paris, it was swallowed up. Even the parking for the presse cars was today a far cry from the leafy enclosures near to the finishes, or spacious lots near the salles de presse. Today, in Paris, it was a free-for-all in the grim underground car park at the gargantuan Hôtel Concorde Lafayette. In the vast hotel where most of the entourage of the Tour de France, the teams, the officials, the presse, would be staying, the salle de pressé was in a claustrophobic conference room.
There weren’t enough cables. There was no complimentary buffet. No welcome. No pampering. Even the signs for the salle itself were comparably small against those for the boutiques and restaurants and those directing important businessmen to some convention or other.
Checking in to her room just to dump her bags, Cat noted the minibar, the satellite TV, the toiletries in the bathroom but she craved her beautiful little bedroom at the Auberge Claudette in Bordeaux. She even found herself reminiscing wistfully about featureless motels and insalubrious two-star establishments.
‘I’m going to the Champs-Elysées,’ Cat told Alex and Josh in the salle, bringing them Orangina and chocolate at enormous cost from her minibar.
‘You won’t see a bloody thing,’ Josh warned her, but wondering where she’d set up her laptop anyway.
‘You’d be better off staying here,’ Alex advised, ‘finish the work quick and then party.’
‘I’m in Paris,’ Cat explained, somewhat aghast, ‘on the last day of the Tour de France. I can’t possibly not walk the streets.’ She ignored Alex’s predictably raised eyebrow. ‘I just want to experience the atmosphere,’ she justified. ‘If a socket comes free, can you plug me in?’
The atmosphere out on the streets bewildered her and she felt as lost and as small as when she’d first arrived in France. Though it was bringing her full circle, it depressed her. The fact that it was cloudy made yesterday, with all the sunshine, seem very distant. Remember the torrential rain from Pau to Luchon? The sleet on the Galibier? The phenomenal heat from Nantes to Pradier? Remember skinny-dipping in the Atlantic? Sitting and star-gazing at Le Cap D’Arp? When was all of that? This year? Surely not. A dream away. Was it real? Did it actually happen? Was I really there? Can I take it home? Can I come again?
Who are all these people milling about? Where have they been these past three weeks? Where were they when the boys were struggling up lonely Pyrenean passes? Or on monotonous stretches of landscape without even farmers on tractors to wave them on? How many here know what it’s like at the Plateau de Boudin? How many stood for hours cheering for the Time Trial at Computaparc?
Why so harsh, Cat?
There are an estimated one million spectators in Paris today.
You should be pleased, they’re all here in support of your precious sport.
Look at the throngs! See, the Arc de Triomphe is positively swamped by what look like, to all intents and purposes, football fans. They’re rowdy. Urban. Unfamiliar.
How wonderful for the riders to return valiant and battle-sore to such clangorous support.
But most of this lot will only have seen the riders hitherto on television, mostly aerially.
Rather like you, hitherto. So, how lucky they are, then, to be treated to an afternoon with the lycra swarm in the flesh, close enough to smell and touch even.
I’m just feeling out of sorts. I don’t want to go home tomorrow.
We know.
I don’t see anyone I recognize. It’s almost impossible for me to move around. My pass seems redundant. There’s no family to belong to here. Just a huge city to contend with. I phoned Ben but we conceded we’d never find each other. I can’t wait for tonight, to see him. And yet I’m dreading tonight because it’s our last and will bring me within hours of having to say goodbye.
‘It’s not that I’m not good at goodbyes,’ Cat said al
oud, tripping over cables as she tried to avoid the crowds by choosing a taxing short cut through the battalion of radio and TV vans, ‘it’s just I’m not sure what I am saying goodbye to.’
‘Cat.’
Cat McCabe stands rooted to the spot.
‘Hullo, Cat.’
Her jaw drops and in her mind’s eye, the past three weeks shrink rapidly into a tiny ball which is bouncing away, out of sight. Away. And fast. Catch it!
‘How’s things?’
A man stands before her. Tall. Broad. Relatively good-looking. Objectively speaking. If he’s your type. Or Cat’s type. It is He Who No Longer Exists. But he obviously does exist as he is here, in the flesh, standing in front of Cat, in Paris.
‘Hullo,’ he says again.
Still Cat is speechless. And there is no Josh, no Alex, no Rachel, no Ben, no one remotely near to sense her distress and come to her rescue.
‘What are you doing here?’ she gasps at last, hating her voice, hating the moment, wishing she’d stayed in the salle de pressé, wishing she’d never come to the Tour de France, wishing He Who Is Standing In Front Of Her, wasn’t.
‘I was the one who kindled your interest in cycling, remember,’ he says lightly. ‘I came to watch the race. The grand finale. I came to find you.’
‘Me?’ Cat says, wondering if he’s really here or whether this is some bizarre apparition, and if he really is here, does that mean perhaps the last three weeks never really existed? Was she really a part of the Tour de France?
‘Can we talk?’ he is saying.
‘About?’ Cat asks, her eyes flitting around, still seeing no point of reference, no known saviour (and, at a time like this, even Jan Airie would do) anywhere in the vicinity. She is cursing herself that, without her entourage, she suddenly feels so small and timid. Exactly as she was just under a month ago.
‘Well,’ he says, his voice known so well but making her chill as so often it did, ‘I’m glad I came across you.’