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