by Freya North
Shit! Cat faltered, looking over her shoulder at the bus, Vasily! What were you going to say, Rachel?
It can wait, Cat – don’t worry about it – it can wait. It was nothing.
When Cat and Ben had disappeared from sight and the bidons were all done, Rachel cleaned the Oakleys once more.
‘Vasily, Vasily,’ she said under her breath, ‘what am I meant to think, let alone do?’
A little later, Rachel did something she had never done. She went to her rider. Two of the team had come to her room for a leg rub, another had come for fresh socks but she hadn’t seen Vasily. Vasily probably didn’t need clothing or massage or to be disturbed, but still Rachel went to his room.
‘Hey,’ she said.
‘Hullo, Rachel,’ he replied.
‘Can I come in?’ Rachel asked.
‘Please,’ he said, holding the door and welcoming her. She was deflated that he left it ajar.
‘Can I do anything for you?’ she asked.
‘It’s a short Stage,’ Vasily shrugged. ‘I am fine, please do not worry.’ Rachel was standing with her back to the window, Vasily was leaning leisurely against the wall, the bed was between them. Rachel noticed that Vasily had, for some reason, made it.
‘OK,’ said Rachel, hovering, wondering if he’d forgotten, remembered or merely dismissed the day before. ‘About yesterday,’ she started.
Vasily raised a hand. ‘Please,’ he said kindly, ‘do not worry.’
Rachel regarded her feet.
I’m not worried. I just want to know if there might be more from whence it came.
‘Don’t worry,’ she echoed, her fixed smile contradicting the darting of her eyes.
‘Oh,’ said Vasily dismissively, ‘I won’t. I forgot it already.’ He wondered why Rachel had suddenly cast her gaze away. ‘Rachel,’ he said softly, advancing towards her, ‘it was not meant to be. If I am OK with it, I expect you – my soigneur – to be so too.’
Rachel looked up at him, he was close and lovely and she wanted to touch his lips with her fingertips. She nodded, not able to wrest a forlorn edge from her gesture.
‘You look sad,’ Vasily said.
‘I’m fine,’ Rachel said a little too loudly.
‘It won’t last,’ he continued.
‘You’re right,’ Rachel confirmed.
‘It won’t last, I will have it again,’ Vasily continued, his apparent contradiction distracting Rachel momentarily from the fact that he was fingering the buttons on her denim shirt.
‘I don’t think so,’ Rachel said, quite crossly.
Who does he think I am? Some fucking groupie willing to dispense sex when he so demands?
‘Rachel!’ Vasily remonstrated.
‘What?’ Rachel objected.
‘I say it won’t last, I will have it again,’ Vasily said, ‘and you tell me no, that I won’t?’
‘You bloody won’t,’ said Rachel.
‘I don’t need bloody shit like this,’ said Vasily.
‘And nor,’ Rachel declared, ‘do I.’
She brushed past him and made to go. Vasily caught her arm. ‘You think it’s not possible?’ he implored. Rachel looked at him coldly, her jaw locked with indignation and hurt. She snatched her arm away and stomped towards the door. ‘It won’t last,’ Vasily declared. ‘I will have it again.’
‘Fuck off, Jawlensky,’ Rachel hissed.
‘Yesterday meant nothing. You will see,’ Vasily proclaimed to her back, ‘I will take the maillot jaune in the mountains.’
Rachel stopped stock still, closed her eyes and grimaced.
You stupid, idiot girl. He’s a fucking cyclist. He was talking about a piece of bloody yellow lycra all along. Not you. Not kissing you.
Rachel turned.
And now he looks hurt and confused. And why wouldn’t he be? His faithful soigneur has just doubted his pedal prowess.
Rachel went back to her rider and laid the palm of her hand gently at his cheek. ‘Oh shit,’ she whispered, ‘I didn’t realize. I thought you. I meant about.’
Vasily tipped his head to one side and regarded her. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘you speak better for Vasily so he can understand.’
‘Understand this,’ said Rachel, standing on tiptoes and planting a small, apologetic but emphatic kiss on his mouth. Suddenly he was kissing her back, his tongue leaping around her mouth on a mission of its own.
‘Rachel,’ he murmured, wonderfully gravelly. He took her hand and placed it against his groin. She could feel him, rock hard. Rachel took his hand and placed it over her breast. Then she guided it under her shirt to her bare flesh, her nipple enticingly at the centre of his palm.
‘What do you want?’ she whispered, dabbing her tongue tip on the dimple in his chin. He encircled her with his arms, pressed his groin against her and moved his body gently.
‘I want to stay out of trouble,’ Vasily murmured into the top of her head. ‘I need to ride near the front today but not too hard. Tomorrow, the Pyrenees. Tomorrow, I am at war with Ducasse.’
Cat’s job was not just easy to do that day, it was a true pleasure. On a glorious sunny afternoon refreshingly punctuated by a gentle breeze, the race headed out from Sauternes and through lines of the famous lime-green vines striping the land like corduroy. The route headed due south, down through Gascony to the Beam region and its capital, Pau; gateway to the Pyrenees, harbinger of the first mountain trials of the Tour de France but also a lovely old university town crowned with a picture-perfect fourteenth-century château. Cat was excited to be there; not even a nondescript modern motorlodge could dampen her delight.
It was an easy Stage to report and she whacked out 500 words effortlessly. It was easy to work diligently when a certain euphoria tided you along, when the person responsible for that euphoria was willing you to finish your work because he was waiting for you. The route had been raced fast with an exciting photo-finish between three riders, a paragraph-worthy mass pile-up near Brocas-les-Forges, no change in the general classification nor the jersey wearers and no abandonments. Tomorrow, out of the original 189 starters, 180 would be heading towards their nemeses at altitude.
‘Finito!’ Cat exclaimed.
‘Are you on a mission or something?’ Alex probed.
‘Yup, Rachel and I are having a drink before dinner,’ Cat said, her eyes glinting, ‘so I’d better shoot. I’ll see you later, boys.’
Josh watched Cat all but skip out of the salle de pressé. He thought her to be ridiculously excited over a pre-dinner drink with a girl she’d had breakfast with that morning.
‘Rachel and Cat,’ Alex guffawed, nudging a bemused Josh for good measure, ‘kinky!’
‘You’re a prat, Fletcher,’ said Josh. ‘I’m going out for some air.’
And there was Rachel. And there was Ben.
‘Hey, Josh,’ Rachel called.
Josh approached them. ‘Cat’s just left,’ he said to Rachel, knowing instantly why Rachel looked momentarily puzzled. ‘You’re meeting for a drink?’ he said, as if reminding her kindly though he analysed her response. He glanced at Ben as if to say, my! aren’t girls dippy.
‘Oh yes,’ Rachel said, tapping her temples, ‘I’m losing my mind.’ She returned Ben’s shot glance in what she hoped was a legibly conspiratorial way.
‘I think she’s gone to phone her boyfriend first,’ Josh heard himself say before he allowed himself to check his words and consider his point. He was looking steadily at Rachel but he could feel Ben regard him abruptly. ‘Didn’t Cat say something about him coming out for some of the mountain Stages?’ Josh continued to Rachel.
‘Um,’ Rachel faltered as if pondering Josh’s query rather than wracking her brains for any clue that Cat had given her of a boyfriend back home.
‘Anyway,’ Josh said lightly, ‘that’s where she’s gone – her daily indulgence of long-distance sweet nothings.’
‘That’s nice,’ Rachel said distractedly.
‘I’d better shoot,’ said Ben, t
urning and walking away.
‘Me too,’ said Rachel, doing the same.
‘Yes,’ said Josh, ‘and me.’ He returned slowly to the salle de pressé hating himself but not kicking himself. What had he just done? Was he trying to protect Cat? From Ben? For her boyfriend back home? She so sparkled in the doctor’s company. Was he trying to keep Cat chaste? And if so, for whom? The boyfriend? Or himself?
Cat was waiting for Ben in her room. He was later than she had anticipated and she was so highly charged with desire that when he knocked, she flung open the door and greeted him with a torrent of kisses. She didn’t want him to use his mouth for an explanation, she didn’t need an apology. Kissing was all she required to come from his lips.
Ben, who was thoroughly disconcerted by what he’d just learned from Josh, had intended to ask Cat for some information and honesty. But her mouth was so sweet and kissing her was so tantalizing and her hands were running all over his body and his cock was responding in fine style. So, Ben allowed Cat to lead and she took to her role with relish, stripping herself first and then Ben. She went on top and held her position there. She felt fantastic to Ben and, as he came, his hands on her firm buttocks, his tongue deep in her mouth, his body thrust high into hers, their eyes locked together, he thought how he never wanted to let her go. As he left, he considered how she wasn’t even available for the taking.
STAGE 9
Pau-Luchon. 196.5 kilometres
Fen opened the door to her Kentish Town flat to find Pip clutching the Guardian and two cappuccinos in polystyrene cups. Pip had phoned not half an hour before and Fen had told her that she was working from home because she was desperate for no distraction. The fact that Fen was embroiled in a relationship with a colleague, as well as dithering over another man in Derbyshire, was distraction incarnate. Pip, who did not have a conventional job, never mind the choice of one man let alone two, assessed that if her sister was not physically at her place of work, or getting physical with a male, it meant she was at play and available for confabulation. The fact that Fen was visibly flummoxed, surrounded by papers and fluorescent Post-its, was of no relevance to Pip. She bustled in, removed the plastic lids from the coffee and licked each one clean. Fen, exasperated, motioned to her papers and files.
‘Very nice,’ said Pip, handing her sister a coffee, turning straight to Cat’s report on the procession down to Pau the previous day. ‘She’s very good, our baby sis,’ Pip murmured as Cat’s passion for the Tour filtered through the newsprint and infused the reader.
‘I’m dying to know what’s happening,’ Fen said, now enjoying the cappuccino and grateful for her sister’s intrusion.
‘Me too,’ Pip enthused. ‘Both Cat and that nice Paul Sherwen chap from Channel 4 say that the race starts in earnest now, in the mountains, that the challenge for the yellow jersey will be at its most intense and consequential.’
Fen stared at Pip. ‘All that – yes,’ she said, ‘and Fabian Ducasse is a spunk and a half, but I was referring to Cat – and the doc. Where do you think they’re at?’
‘Oh blimey, of course,’ Pip said, sitting cross-legged at her sister’s feet, ‘brawny Ben.’
‘Shall we phone her?’ Fen suggested, already dialling. Pip grabbed the phone from her, scooping cappuccino froth from the side of the cup with her index finger while waiting for Cat to answer.
‘Hullo?’ said Cat, sounding like she was just around the corner, sounding like she had just woken up.
‘Have you shagged him yet?’ Pip all but squealed.
Though she really shouldn’t have been startled by her sister’s trademark bluntness, Cat found herself answering with an affirmative giggle. While she listened to her sisters shrieking with delight in the background, Cat considered that, though she had indeed shagged Ben, that they had quite categorically fucked each other’s brains out, gorged on each other to satisfy a very base hunger, there had been an edge to it all. Right from the start. Sexual desire, yes, but something else, something more too. Merely confirming that she had shagged the man did both him and herself something of a disservice. It had been more than just sex, but what, exactly? Surely the sex could not have been so good without this enhancing extra layer of something or other? Physical attraction is one thing on but one level; to be mutually attracted to each other is something else and multi-faceted. And somewhat perplexing.
‘He’s lovely,’ Cat said to Pip’s ‘Come on come on come on!’
‘What was it like?’ Fen asked excitedly. ‘Was he good?’
‘It was great,’ Cat replied.
‘Where did you do it?’ Pip butted in. ‘When? How many times?’
‘I like him,’ Cat reiterated, thinking, deluded, that she was being discreetly noncommittal, ‘it was great.’
And then Cat changed the subject. ‘The weather is absolutely appalling here today – it’s cold and very wet. It’s going to be torture for the boys. Promise you’ll watch? Promise you’ll pray for them? You’re going to meet a host of new characters today – all those powerful sprinters so familiar last week will now be gone from sight. They’ve passed the baton to the grimpeurs – lithe, wiry, crazy, brave boys. Watch what the mountains do to them. Watch what they do to the mountains.’
‘The fact that she changed the subject in a way she thought was so subtle—’ Fen starts, replacing the handset, finishing the coffee and reordering her piles of papers.
‘Means one of two things,’ Pip completes.
‘Either the sex was a bit disappointing and reality has let her daydream down,’ Fen theorizes.
‘Or,’ Pip continues for her, ‘Cat’s gone and fallen for him.’
‘In some ways,’ says Fen, very slowly, ‘I rather hope she hasn’t.’
‘I know,’ says Pip, ‘I do too. She’d be safer.’
‘But I rather think it’s the latter,’ Fen clarifies, ‘and I don’t want her to be hurt.’
‘I mean, he’s probably a really lovely guy with honourable intentions,’ Pip says, ‘and has massive desire for Cat, which is great for her – but if she is falling for more than his ability to bring her to orgasm, she is somewhat vulnerable.’
‘And I don’t want her to hurt,’ Fen states, ‘she’s had enough of that.’
Pip was staring at Fen’s calendar from the Musée Rodin.
‘The Eternal Idol, 1899,’ Fen whispers rather hoarsely. ‘Isn’t that clit-quiveringly wonderful?’
‘Huh? Oh yes!’ Pip says, changing her focus to observe the photo of the sculpture. ‘But I was thinking – fancy a weekend in the Alps?’
Fabian Ducasse has spent the least accumulative time in the saddle which is why he is wearing the yellow jersey. He’s been racing for eight days and has covered over 1,570 kilometres in 41½ hours riding. He has over 2,000 kilometres to go, twelve further days in the saddle with two rest days during which he’ll be on his bike, of course. Fabian Ducasse, twenty-nine years old, will climb five mammoth Pyrenean passes today. Tomorrow, another five. All in all, there are seven days in which mountains are to be tackled. By our boys. On their bicycles.
As Cat told her sisters, we have new characters to meet who have spent the last week wisely sheltering safe in the air bubble at the centre of the bunch, conserving their energy for the mountains. The pure sprinters have now had their apportionment of fame. Their current concerns are merely to survive the next week if they are going to make it to Paris at all. Last week, they surged and pumped hard at the front of the peloton in front of the world, now they’ll gladly join the grupetto, the bus of riders that forms the back of the bunch, just keeping together, keeping going, living to ride another day, riding for a living though it nearly kills them. Jesper Lomers and Stefano Sassetta will continue to duel for the green jersey to prove who is the Tour’s most consistent daily finisher; one who can cope with the mountains in the second week, as much as he shone at sprinting in the first. Jesper’s wife Anya has not yet made an appearance. Jesper is doing battle with himself to keep his professional a
nd personal lives separate. And he is at war with Stefano. A handful of points separate them.
We met the two major contenders for the polka dot King of the Mountains jersey before the race but we’ve hardly seen them since. Donna magazine’s ‘Sexiest Man on Two Wheels’, Zucca MV’s dashing Massimo Lipari; the face of a popular chocolate-hazelnut spread and a familiar fixture in the Italian music charts each summer when he releases synthetic Europop in honour of the Giro, his nation’s Grand Tour. Massimo has been King of the Mountains for the last two years. However, the man that Système Vipère transferred at great expense to put a stop to Massimo’s run is the Pocket Rocket – small but charismatic Carlos Jesu Velasquez. A Spaniard riding for a French team, he is taciturn, a family man. Lipari and Velasquez’s style on bike and off are vastly different. Their ability this year is neck and neck. Their aim is the same. The polka dot jersey. A slip of white lycra, spotted red, well worth the pain of pelting up peaks for points.
‘The hills are alive!’ Luca warbled at breakfast, the rest of Megapac regarding him with a mixture of pity and contempt. ‘Come on, guys,’ he continued quietly. Ben looked at him unseen, sensing the rider’s bravado was but a thin veneer laid unconvincingly over his truer anticipation, dread and fear.
‘Eat,’ Ben said, eyeing the plates of pasta. ‘Your bodies are going to use a lot of energy keeping warm today.’
The team were well aware of the rain teeming down the windows. ‘Climb every mountain,’ sang Luca, rather forlornly. Hunter pointed his knife at him but said nothing.
‘It’s wet but all of you must drink as often as you can,’ Ben said, ‘and lots of Vaseline on your feet so wet socks won’t rub.’
‘It’s too wet and cold for bikinis,’ Luca rued, taking more pasta though he wasn’t hungry in the slightest, ‘such a shame. Maybe there’ll be some wet T-shirts instead, hey guys!’ Travis shot him a withering look that went unseen.
