the team?’ Cat asked nonchalantly. Rachel looked over her shoulder to the closed door and blacked-out windows of the camper.
‘Tense,’ she said.
‘I’ll bet,’ Cat colluded. Massimo Lipari appeared and Cat had to ensure she did not break into a wild grin though a small smile crept out unannounced anyway.
‘Hey, Massimo,’ said Alex. The rider tipped his head in recognition, asking Alex, in Italian, how he was and Alex, in Italian, rabbiting away until he had achieved an obvious goal of making the rider chuckle. Rachel was gladly telling Cat about how she came by her job – she’d never had a journalist express interest in her career, she’d never actually talked directly to a female journalist – when Massimo tapped Rachel on the shoulder, stood for a moment before tapping her again, staring intently at Cat all the while.
‘Rachel, I need the jacket, yes, for here?’ he proffered his left elbow displaying a glistening and pretty grave graze acquired from a careless fall whilst training yesterday.
‘Jacket?’ Rachel asked, shooting a glance at Cat. ‘You mean the gauze tube? Excuse me,’ she said to Cat with an apologetic shrug, ‘it’s been nice talking. Pop by again some time, hey?’
‘Brilliant,’ Cat enthused. Massimo stared at her again. It was only when Rachel had turned from her and led the cyclist into the secret interior of the van that it struck Cat that Massimo had actually stared at her quite accusatorially.
And why shouldn’t he? I was hogging his soigneur. How awful of me.
Alex had disappeared. Josh was nowhere to be seen. Cat turned and decided that to walk around with purpose even if she hadn’t a clue what to do next, was a sensible option. Everywhere she looked, she now saw the faces and bodies of the men she had previously known only second-hand, behind the glass of a television, or two-dimensionally in print. Now they were surrounding her, life size, in the flesh, en masse. It was so overwhelming, she found herself unable to establish eye contact with any of them. In turning away from the awesome Mario Cipollini whom she could see from the corner of her eye, hands on hips and a vision in a red lycra skinsuit, she found herself by the Megapac vehicles. By concentrating on not catching sight of her best friends of yesterday – Hunter or Travis or Luca (whose eyes were in any case shut as he pedalled the course in his mind whilst his bike remained stationary on the blocks), her eyes went instead to someone else. Or were they pulled there? Or were they caught?
It’s that guy. The one who sat by Luca at the medical. Oh blimey, what a smile. Hey! I didn’t say that I could smile back.
The man stepped towards her and fingered her pass. ‘Hullo, Catriona McCabe,’ he said, ‘journaliste, the Guardian.’
‘I’m, er,’ she cleared her throat, ‘Cat.’
‘Are you now?’ he said. ‘I’m er doctor.’ Cat regarded him. He gave her an open smile.
‘I’m Ben. York. Hullo.’
Cat nodded rather enthusiastically because she had no idea what to say. She then smiled fleetingly but not directly at Ben York, sweeping it instead quickly and non-commitally over the riders, the Megapac vehicles, and Dr York’s shoes before nodding, biting her lip and moving away, rifling through the pages of her pad whilst chastizing herself silently.
He’s English. That’s nice.
It was gone three o’clock and she thanked God that it was. Cat made her way slowly to a vantage point near the starting ramp and gazed at Travis Stanton as he and his bike were held steady or, Cat felt, perhaps embraced, by a blue-blazered official. She watched another official count the rider down, she observed the rider’s face, the focus, the deep inhalation and exaggerated exhalation. The official’s fingers had finished the count and he sliced the air with his hand. Off. Go. The rider swept down and away towards a lonely, strenuous eight and a half minutes. Cat found that she was holding her breath and had her fingers crossed.
‘My legs. My heart. My mind. My soul.’
Hunter Dean chants the familiar phrase to himself as he pedals slowly through the mêlée around the team cars and on towards the starting ramp.
‘My legs. My heart. My mind. My soul.’
He spits. He is wearing his burgundy and green skinsuit and space-warrior style helmet.
‘I am aerodynamic. My legs. My heart. My mind. My soul.’
He spits again. He does not notice the crowds, nor does he hear them banging on the barriers, cheering. He does not listen to the fading, megaphone drone from a team car out on the course yelling ‘Allez! Allez! Allez!’ at the rider it is following. Hunter notices in a glance that his own team car is ready and he sees his name, printed on a board positioned above the front bumper. Dean.
‘Hunter Fucking Dean. Strong legs. Strong heart. Strong mind. Strong soul.’
He sweeps his bike through two controlled circles and ignores a fellow competitor leaving the ramp.
‘I am fit for this. I am prepared. I am built for this Time Trial. Legs to pump. Heart to pump. Mind steady. Soul ready.’
He takes his position, aware there is a man’s arm under his saddle, which presses lightly against his back.
‘Backbone – strength. Legs – stamina. Heart – power. Mind – focus. Soul – commitment. I am good. I am ready.’
The official is counting him down.
‘Open, lungs – fill. In. Out. Ready.’
Away. Allez.
‘Corner. On. On. Go go go. Corner. Done. Propel me, legs. Drive me, back. Cobbles. Take them. Take them. On. On.’
Hunter is riding well. He is surrounded by noise, but that of the ecstatic crowd is but a sub layer deep in the recesses of his awareness. What he hears is his breathing. As he sweeps the wide arc which takes him to the finishing straight, he does not listen to the growing clangour of the spectators thumping the barriers, he hears instead the pounding of his heart banging in his chest and in his mouth and in his stomach, flat out.
‘Legs. Legs. Legs. Eight twenty-seven. Eight twenty-seven. Come on, you fucker, go.’
Hunter is out of the saddle, stamping down hard, making a great sprint of his final metres. His head is down as he thrusts forward for the line, then it is up and over his shoulder immediately, to clock the time.
Eight minutes, twenty-seven point six eight seconds.
‘Point six eight. Shit.’
Django McCabe took three plain chocolate digestive biscuits and carefully swiped a lick of Marmite over the chocolate sides. He steeped three tea-bags in a small teapot, added three spoonfuls of sugar to the inch of milk in the china cup, selected a non-matching but china saucer and put everything on a tray. He went into the Quiet Room and turned it into the Family Room merely by way of flicking on the television set. He selected Channel 4, muted the volume on the closing scenes of Brookside and made to telephone both his nieces, sipping tea but saving the biscuits until later.
‘Fen, darling, Django here – are you switched on? The bike race
