by Freya North
‘Come to the Megapac dinner,’ Ben suggests, ‘Mitch would love you to be there.’
‘I can’t,’ Cat white lies, ‘I ought to convene with my own team, the press gang.’
‘Later, then,’ says Ben.
‘Of course,’ Cat replies, feeling how Ben makes her bubble, remembering how the other man made her flat. It seemed extraordinary, therefore, that she was to forsake the one in favour of the other tonight.
‘You dance with me later, Gatto?’ Luca asks.
‘Of course,’ Cat assures him.
It’s 10 p.m. Josh and Alex can’t find her. She isn’t in her room and her mobile phone is switched off. Ben says, I thought she was with you. The boys say, we thought she’d be with you. No, haven’t seen her. No, don’t know where she is. Leave a note under her door. She’s probably gone for a stroll. Gone to be self-indulgently metaphysical amidst the debris on the Champs-Elysées which is all that remains of the Tour de France. Yes, that sounds like Cat McCabe.
Only she isn’t on the Champs-Elysées. She’s nowhere near anywhere the cyclists’ wheels have been. I don’t know where she is. I can guess. But she’s permitting no access. No laminated pass can provide entry. No eavesdropping allowed. She wants no interference. She doesn’t need me. She needs privacy. We can give her that. She’s entitled. We trust her. We know she’s strong enough.
‘Where the fuck have you been?’ Alex, pretty pissed, demands jovially when Cat turns up an hour later, at the infamous James Joyce pub just a stone’s throw from the Concorde Lafayette hotel. She gives Alex a friendly whack. She stands still. Takes stock of where she is. Takes a deep breath.
‘I need a drink,’ she says.
Alex goes to the bar and Cat turns to Josh. ‘It was tough,’ she says, ‘I left before pudding. It’s good to be back.’ Josh nods, Alex returns and while he rambles on, Cat looks around her. Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen are supping pints. She sees Rachel and André sitting on bar stools, heads close, his hand on her knee, her hand over his, Rachel talking animatedly, André listening attentively. They suit each other. In some ways, they hold a mirror to Cat; being thrilled for her friend is being happy for herself too.
My God, it’s Greg LeMond. Alex has great pleasure in introducing Cat to the legendary American three-times Tour winner, still the same fresh-faced bright blue-eyed boy whom she has revered for years. The decibel level is as high as people’s spirits, the Guinness is as rich as the experiences being recounted. Laughter flows with the conversation, warmth envelops the proceedings. Luca and Ben turn up soon after and Cat whiles away the night until the early hours; the morning of the day when she will leave France, leave all of this, all of them, to return home.
She and Ben go to bed at 4 a.m., rather drunk and absolutely exhausted. They don’t have sex. They can’t keep their eyes open. They’re too tired. Like everyone else who, in whatever capacity, has done this year’s Tour de France.
DAY 27. MONDAY
Cat McCabe
Here she is. On the ferry. Was it only three and a half weeks ago that she clung to the railings, dreading the white cliffs of Dover disappearing from view and the great unknown unfolding before her? She is scorning the direction of travel to gaze wistfully at France, longing the land mass to remain in view. Oh, to time-travel backwards. That it all could be starting again.
Alex and Josh, where are they?
They’re down in the bar, of course.
And Rachel?
She’ll be on the road, driving the truck, everything shipshape and in order.
And Ben?
He’s just phoned.
But where is he?
At the airport, accompanying Luca to the specialist in Colorado.
And the other riders?
Some will take a few days’ respite from competition to train, of course. Others go headlong in to a round of Criterium races where, as heroes of the Tour de France, they’re paid a sizeable start fee. August is a month full of Classics, of World Cup rounds. And then, of course, the grand tour of Spain, the Vuelta, in just under five weeks’ time.
Will you be covering it?
I hope so.
For whom?
Well, Andy at Maillot has suggested a strategy meeting. Tomorrow, in fact, though I really can’t afford to hold my breath for the Features Editorship. My credit card bill is enormous. However, Jeremy Whittle has come up trumps and wants me to report the Vuelta for Sportsworld’s website. That’ll just about cover my expenses. Hopefully by then I might have a couple of freelance commissions. But you know, to be affiliated to the world of the peloton is riches enough for me.
Who’s meeting you at Victoria station?
I haven’t told anyone what time I’ll be home. I think it’s important I make my return journey by myself.
I think it’s important that you walk to the bow of the ferry, to bravely await the sight of the white cliffs of Dover.
Ben York
Ben sits in the departure lounge at Charles de Gaulle airport. Luca is milling about, delighted when anyone approaches him for an autograph or to commiserate on his bad fortune.
I had to say goodbye to Cat this morning.
You did?
It wasn’t easy. It’s been a phenomenally all-encompassing month.
Did you tell her how you love her?
Hearing it out loud, and hearing it back – I found it intensely emotional.
‘Ben, look at this – fucking fabulous, hey?’
Luca has bought a lighter in the shape of the Eiffel Tower which plays the ‘Marseillaise’ when activated.
‘But you don’t smoke,’ Ben laughs.
‘But look,’ he stresses, brandishing his acquisition, ‘listen!’ Luca sits alongside his doctor, frustrated that, though he is no longer in pain, he is still trussed up and out of action. He regards Ben. ‘So,’ he says. Ben looks at him. Shrugs and nods.
‘It was some Tour, Jonesy,’ says Ben, ‘huge.’
‘The Babe McCabe,’ Luca muses, striking his lighter on and off, never for long enough to move beyond the opening bars of the French National Anthem. Ben nods. ‘You’re good together,’ Luca says whilst nodding and humming thoughtfully. Ben looks away. ‘You see her some more?’ Luca asks. ‘I hope so. You two should – you know? It would be a waste not being together.’
‘Yup,’ Ben says, looking around the departure hall, looking intently at the seam of his trousers, at Luca’s hands fiddling with the lighter. ‘She’s quite something and she lives the other side of the Atlantic Ocean to me. But she’s what I want.’
‘And I always gets what I wants,’ says Luca in distorted American. He regards Ben. ‘Can it work? With your schedules? Your time zones?’
Ben falls silent. ‘I hope so,’ he says earnestly, ‘I really do.’
‘This month will shoot by,’ Luca says encouragingly, ‘before you know it – bam! The Vuelta. Give her a call,’ he suggests, offering his mobile phone for the purpose.
‘I just have,’ says Ben, longing to hear her voice again, torturing himself with the vivid memory of the now unattainable reality of what going to sleep and then waking up alongside Cat is like.
Josh Piper, Catriona McCabe and Alex Fletcher
Josh spies Cat standing by the railings at the bow of the ferry. He can just about make out a glimpse of Britain.
‘Hullo,’ he says, drawing alongside, eyes tight shut against the buffeting wind.
‘Hullo,’ Cat says, turning her back on the sea to open her eyes and face the deck.
‘Shall we drive avant or arrière today?’ Josh asks.
‘Well, I need to hang around the village,’ Cat muses, ‘I want to speak to Stuart O’Grady and Jay Sweet.’
‘We’ll go arrière then,’ Josh decrees.
‘OK,’ Cat says brightly. ‘I wonder what the presse buffet will provide us with today.’
‘If it’s crap,’ Josh reasons, ‘we can abuse my expense account and go for a blow-out dinner when we’ve finished our reports. A few bottles of Seize bef
orehand.’
‘OK,’ says Cat.
‘What are you doing on the 7th?’ Josh asks.
‘Isn’t that the San Sebastian Classic?’ Cat responds.
‘Well, I was thinking more along the lines of dinner at mine – meet my wife.’
‘And reminisce?’ Cat asks.
‘Absolutely,’ Josh confirms.
‘It’s a date,’ Cat says.
They share the affable silence that is true testimony of good friendship. After a while, Cat turns to Josh. ‘Yesterday,’ she says quietly, ‘was bizarre.’
‘You’d never have known from the quality of your report,’ says Josh, a rolled-up copy of the Guardian in his back pocket, ‘your piece was great.’
‘My final paragraph,’ Cat elucidates, ‘my last full stop – rather than bringing matters to a close, it flung the doors of my life hereafter wide open.’
‘You have so much ahead of you,’ Josh stresses.
‘I know that now – unequivocally. But the realization would not have transpired so soon had he not turned up. I was finally able to conclude that chapter of my life, put the last full stop in place. Now I have a clean, fresh page. It’s a little daunting but quite exciting too.’
‘Did he want you back?’ Josh probes.
‘What if he did?’ Cat replies. ‘I don’t know where my future will take me but I now know very clearly what I don’t want. As I packed my rucksack one final time last night, I actually did some unpacking too. Things I don’t need for my journey, things that were weighing me down.’
‘That was then and this is now,’ Josh defines. ‘You know, Cat,’ he continues, thinking himself very Oprah fucking Winfrey, ‘we’re often at our strongest when we decide to take risks – because we’re ready and confident to tackle whatever the outcome will be.’
‘You know something, Josh?’ Cat responds. ‘I feel blessed with that strength now.’
‘I feel seasick,’ moans Alex, joining them. ‘Great hairstyle, Cat. Fuck me! We’re almost home.’
‘About ten minutes from docking,’ Josh estimates, scouring the horizon and the land mass like an old sea dog. ‘What are you doing on the 7th, Alex?’
‘It’s the San Sebastian Classic, isn’t it?’ Alex says.
‘Or dinner round mine,’ says Josh.
‘Cool,’ says Alex. ‘Are you going to be there, Cat?’
‘Most certainly,’ says Cat.
‘Cool,’ says Alex.
Cat links arms with her colleagues and they prepare to disembark back on to English soil.
OCTOBER
Paris. The launch of next year’s Tour de France
Cat took the Eurostar from Waterloo to Paris the day before the launch and was booked to come back the day after it. Josh and Alex were travelling the next morning, making it a day trip. Though a train journey with them would have been fun and would have passed swiftly, Cat was thankful that she was alone even if the minutes seemed insufferably long. Ben was to meet her at Gard du Nord. She hadn’t seen him since the Vuelta finished twenty-two days ago, a period of time the same length as a Tour de France and the trial of it just as arduous. And now she was on a train rumbling under the Channel towards three days and two nights with her beau. Paris couldn’t come quick enough.
Though Cat and Ben, to each other, their friends and family, constantly rue the fact that they live thousands of miles apart, their relationship has blossomed and, with it, the fortunes of their respective telecommunications companies and postal services. Ben managed a stopover at Heathrow airport a week after the Tour de France ended and then they had twenty-five days together in Spain. With the salle de pressé of the Vuelta being a quarter of the size of the Tour de France, the pressures were much less too and Cat and Ben were able to indulge in each other’s company. Luca had loved his profile written by Cat for Pedal Power. More to the point, so had Jeremy Whittle who had praised her, paid her handsomely and commissioned a daily website from her during the Vuelta. She still doesn’t know if she will be Features Editor at Maillot but she should find out at the launch tomorrow.
During the Vuelta, Luca won two consecutive Stages and ensured he rubbed his collar bone theatrically, accidentally on purpose, when giving interviews at the finishes and for the benefit of his fans watching coverage on TV. He had become a hugely popular and well-known figure in the peloton. Press and fans and riders alike were interested that, next season, he was to be a Viper Boy. Fabian Ducasse won the Vuelta and, the week before last, the World Championship Time Trial too. Vasily Jawlensky came second. Last week, Lance Armstrong won the World Championship Road Race. Vasily Jawlensky came second. But the season will end with the great Russian’s name still foremost on everybody’s lips and it is his image which remains imprinted on everyone’s memory of the season: the reigning maillot jaune of the Tour de France.
So how are you, Cat?
I’m fine. I’m happy. I’m broke. My train ticket is an early birthday present from Fen and Pip. Django has just paid off my phone bill. I’m twenty minutes from the Gard du Nord and the arms of Ben York. I feel like an excited, lovestruck teenager. It’s a wonderful sensation and it doesn’t dissipate in the slightest the deeper I get to know him.
So we’re talking love, then?
Good God, yes.
The train trundles in to Gard du Nord and, with her stomach aflutter, her adrenal gland in overdrive and her heart evidently beating twenty to the dozen at the base of her throat, Cat disembarks and weaves her way up the platform. And there he is. She’s never seen him in a thick jumper and she’s struck by how very lovely he looks. All he can see is the girl he loves beaming at him. She’s had a haircut, he notices, and she looks gorgeous. She looks robustly feminine with her healthy glow and assertive stride. He can’t wait to kiss her, to whisk her away to the bohemian but rather luxurious hotel he has found for her on the rue de Buci in the heart of the Latin Quarter. He’s about to say hullo, to take her bag, to tell her that they’ll take a taxi but he can’t squeeze out even a word because she has plugged his mouth with kisses. Never let you go. Missed you very, very much. Want you so badly.
In the Parisian rush hour, they gaze out of the cab windows at the city, whilst entwining their fingers together. Polite conversation is a necessity to curb their overwhelming desire to strip each other naked and ravish each other immediately.
‘How’s Luca?’ Cat enquires. ‘Did he send me his love?’
‘Shit,’ Ben gasps, ‘I almost forgot, these are for you.’ He cups her head in his hand and kisses each cheek in turn, twice over. ‘They’re from Luca for Gatto McCabe. Did I tell you he now sports a goatee beard and a pony-tail?’
‘Does it suit him?’
‘Judging by the amount of fan mail he receives, yes it does. How’s Rachel?’ Ben asks. ‘What’s her news?’
‘She and André kipped at mine for a night last week,’ Cat tells him. ‘I phoned Jeremy Whittle last week, pitching an idea for a feature on Rachel – it’s an excuse really, to have an expenses-paid weekend with her!’
‘And?’
‘Jez likes the idea.’
‘She’s still with André, then?’
‘Oh, very much so. They went to their directeurs and told them that unless they accepted their relationship and allowed them to keep their respective jobs at Zucca MV and Système Vipère, they’d both leave and work for the Deutsche Telekom team instead.’
‘That’s some ultimatum,’ Ben laughs, ‘good for them. I’m glad they’re going strong, I like them both individually and they make a great couple.’ Automatically, he squeezes Cat’s hand and she knots her fingers frenetically to his. ‘How about Fen,’ Ben asks, ‘has she made a decision? Is she now a one-man woman, so to speak?’
‘She’s fine,’ Cat smiles, ‘and yes, she made the decision – kept everyone guessing right till the very end.’
‘And Pip?’ Ben enquires.
‘Pip’s life is suddenly rather glamorous,’ Cat tells him. ‘In fact, she’s been flown out to
some tiny, luxury Caribbean island. But it’s a long story and see – we’ve just crossed the river.’
‘And Django, whom I’ve yet to meet?’
‘Django, who’s desperate to meet you, is fine. You’ll meet at New Year. We all had a fabulous weekend up in Derbyshire. You’re going to love it. Are we there yet? Soon?’
‘Here’s rue de Buci. And Josh and Alex?’ Ben asks. ‘What’s their news?’
‘Can we talk about them later?’ Cat requests, already heading towards reception.
Both Cat and Ben had survived the previous few days on a frequent, semi-sustaining diet of envisaging lengthy foreplay and meaningful looks and long, leisurely lovemaking. However, because both had subsisted the last three weeks on memories of their past couplings and prophecies of those future; because they had frequently gone to bed alone craving each other and masturbating in honour of each other, now in Paris, in their hotel room, they all but tore their clothing off and fell to the bed, kissing wildly, their eyes closed with the exquisite pleasure of it all. Running hands just the once up and over one another’s bodies was enough to have Ben as hard as he’d ever be and Cat as juiced and expectant likewise.
‘Stop, stop, stop,’ Ben gasped trying to still Cat’s hips from gyrating him to premature orgasm. He flipped her over, pulling her on top and she sat astride him; only he had to close his eyes because the very sight of her could make him come against his wishes. They didn’t stay in one position for very long because they were desperate to re-explore each other from every angle imagined and imaginable.
Lying on their sides with Ben taking her from behind, it was suddenly Cat imploring Ben to stop, stop, stop. They lay motionless, Ben feeling the vivid pulsations of Cat’s sex sucking his cock deep into her, immensely turned on by hearing her gasp, her voice breaking through. He rolled her on to her stomach and lay himself on top of her, bucking up inside her deep and strong. He took his hands underneath her, burrowing his fingers between the lips of her sex to rub and twitch her clitoris. Cat was climaxing again and soon enough Ben was coming with her. He’d been on the point of orgasm since first entering her and it welled from the pit of his stomach before shifting down to the centre of his balls, zooming up his cock and firing out into the musky, hot welcoming darkness of deep inside Cat. It was a taste in his mouth, a scent in his nose. It was explosive. He could have passed out. Instead, they went out for a light supper and light conversation, drank much red wine and returned to their room to make love leisurely as they’d long envisaged.