Cat

‘Four days until the Tour. Bien. I need coffee. Caffeine is good. And it tastes better when sipped alongside a beautiful woman.’

He made a phone call. ‘Hélène? You can get away? Coffee?’ His girlfriend of three weeks reminded him that she was at work, in the next town, so he would have to be content that she was having to be content with coffee from the vending machine. Fabian shrugged as he hung up. He went down in to the square and had coffee and an ego-massage by the blonde woman whose name he asked but forgot immediately. He felt incredibly horny. But he forgot that too because he wanted to do 80 kilometres on his bike. Fast.

‘Fabian?’ Jules Le Grand, Système Vipère’s directeur sportif, phones his team leader from his mobile phone whilst walking across town from appointment to appointment. A suave man of forty-seven, with an impressive shock of well-styled grey hair, a pair of fabulously expensive gold-rimmed spectacles, a discerning penchant for meticulously designed suits and an almost uncontrollable fondness for exquisite calf-skin loafers, Jules Le Grand would almost look more at home in the offices of a Parisian couturier than amongst the chain grease, muscle embrocation and general blood and sweat that accompanies his job on a daily basis.

Cyclisme is my life, my passion – but why compromise on style? It is not necessary. Only lazy. Laziness is anathema, the enemy, in all to do with cycling, in all to do with life. In that order – compris?

With a phenomenal amount to organize, check and double-check in the rapidly diminishing days, hours, prior to the Tour, the mobile phone, in Jules’s mind, is as great an invention of the modern age as the carbon-fibre bicycle frame.

‘Fabian?’ Jules checks his watch and allows himself the rare luxury of making the call at a standstill.

With a white towel, shorter than necessary (but that was the point entirely) wrapped around his waist, Fabian crooks the phone under his neck whilst trying to figure out the lesser of two evils – to drip on his cream rug or on his fine wood floor. He is going to have to do one or the other because he couldn’t possibly tell his directeur that now isn’t a convenient time.

The Tour de France is not just about cycling your way to Paris, but to the next season also. It’s where contracts are confirmed. I must behave on and off my bike, before and during the race.

‘Jules,’ Fabian says warmly, ‘ça va? I have just done a good ride. I have pasta boiling.’

Shit! I made it sound like he is inconveniencing me.

‘I wanted to talk to you before team dinner tonight,’ Jules continues. ‘About next year. About you and Système Vipère. How is your stereo?’

As head of this company, negotiation is my forte. Or one of my many. As directeur sportif, it is my business to know what makes my riders click.

Fabian hops lightly from rug to floorboard, grins at his stereo and grimaces at the two damp indentations of his feet that appear to be indelibly imprinted on his luxurious rug.

‘My stereo is great – I hardly ever have it off. Listen.’ Fabian holds the telephone receiver out into the centre of the room, presuming his directeur can hear Prince. Jules can’t but he holds his receiver patiently, checking the battery level and signal strength, until Fabian decides to return to his. ‘Did you hear?’ Fabian asks. ‘Système Vipère is my life – on the bike and off. At all times, I am a Viper Boy.’

That’s good – yeah! Jules will like that – a strong commitment that is far more than just a job for me.

‘If you like,’ Jules says, ‘you can have a new stereo. That is, if you stay with us next year.’

The stereo was tempting enough, but Fabian knows it is worthless without a salary to echo, in his mind anyway, his value for the team.

I’ll stay silent.

‘Plus, of course,’ Jules furthers with elaborate sincerity, Fabian’s unsophisticated business strategy making him smile, ‘a substantial increase in salary. How would it feel to be the highest paid rider in the peloton?’

How does it feel? Fabian pondered moments later, staring at the replaced handset, glowering at his footprints on wood, glaring at the marks still defiant on the rug. It feels fucking great. I feel like fucking. See, it has made me hard.

But the Tour de France starts in four days. Shouldn’t you save your energy? Celibacy is team policy. Jules is fairly firm on where he stands on sex.

Fairly firm – ha! From where I stand, I am downright hard. I know my body. In bed. On a bike. No problem.

‘Fabian, Fabian,’ Jules cooed triumphantly, checking his messages and finding four were left during the call to his key rider. Before responding to any of them, he phoned the team’s sponsors.

‘Bien,’ Jules told them, ‘no problem with Fabian – unless Zucca MV try to sabotage him with a hundred blow jobs.’

‘And Jesper Lomers?’ they demanded to know. ‘Has he signed?’

‘Jesper will not be a problem,’ Jules assured them.

It’s his bloody wife who will cause trouble, Jules hissed to himself as he listened to yet another message left during his call. All wives are bloody – I’ve had three, I should know. Maybe Jesper would function better with a mistress – I certainly do.

I can focus all my attention on the team, Jules mused, and yet have a woman, at my behest, focus all her attention on me. Perfect!

His phone rang. It was one of the team mechanics. Jules listened, said, ‘Spinergy wheels of course – imbécile,’ and hung up. The phone rang again. It was the French sports newspaper L’Equipe. ‘Système Vipère are supreme at the moment,’ Jules quoted with bravado, ‘Ducasse, Lomers and Velasquez – they will be beautiful to watch. On paper, it is the toughest Tour for a long time, but the Vipers’ strength will be like venom to all other riders. You can quote me.’ He hung up.

Jules tried Jesper Lomers. No reply.

But no reply is good – it means he is training. And no reply is better than Anya answering the phone. Irritating female – she sees Système Vipère as the ‘other woman’. Would Jesper be happy if he was not racing? Would he be a good husband then? She thinks it is she who makes him happy, fulfilled, loved. I know it is Système Vipère. Luckily, I don’t think Jesper gives the theory much thought at all. I’ll try him again. No reply. Good. Later.

The phone rang again. It was a young rider. ‘If you have diarrhoea,’ Jules said patiently, ‘what must you eat? That’s right, hard-boiled eggs, rice and live yoghurt. How much water did you take? That’s not enough. We’ll put you on electrolytes tonight.’ He hung up and laughed.

Directeur sportif? Call me père des coureurs – am I a trainer, a manager or papa?

‘That is why I am strict, a bastard,’ Jules muttered, temporarily changing his pace to a stroll. ‘I can shout at a rider in the morning, yell at him from the car during a race, yet by the evening, when he has finished, he is desperate for my embrace. I have to be a father figure to my racers for it is essential that they trust me and crave my approval through their excellence. Why else would they ride? Fabian only for money? Jesper only for his wife’s love? Get real.’

Jules marched purposefully across the place to the restaurant he had granted the accolade of hosting that year’s pre-Tour team dinner. In the town of Eustace St Pierre, it was an honour that all restaurants strove for each year. The proprietors wanted to pamper Jules with complimentary drinks, some fish soup, tarte tatin. Jules refused. He was there to check on the menu and arrange the seating plan. Busy. Too busy to eat or socialize, no time for pleasantries at all really.

The Tour de France is on Jules’s mind 365 days a year. And because of this, his popularity never suffers. The Tour defines a Frenchman’s calendar – for Jules Le Grand to be so unwaveringly committed to it sets him up as a hero amongst his countrymen. The Tour de France preoccupies Jules throughout the season, even when it is still months away. Paris–Nice, Tirreno–Adriatico, Catalan Week, Criterium International, Liège–Bastogne–Liège, the Dauphiné Libéré. Though each race, revered enough in its own right, is given focused dedication, Jules thinks of them all as but preparation for the great one. The Tour de France is always on the tip of his tongue, behind the sparkle in his eye, ever simmering in his mind. The Tour commands his every thought, awake or asleep. Strategy becomes all-consuming.

Directeur sportif? I am a brilliant tactician.

Tonight’s strategy was for no strategy to be discussed and yet the very purpose of the evening was utterly strategic – team bonding and last mouthfuls of haute cuisine before all vestiges of normal life were relinquished to the clutch and drive of the Tour, to pasta at every single meal, to conversation, dream, thought, breath, devoted exclusively to the race.

More than father to the riders, more than director of a small company whose location changes on almost a daily basis, more than diplomat, or supreme strategist – ultimately I am an army general. The Tour de France is not just about teams of riders going to war against each other; frequently the most severe battle for a rider is an individual one with his own self-belief. I must try Jesper again. That is why I must get to Jesper.

‘Hey!’ Fabian drawls when he arrives at the restaurant and sits himself down, ‘it’s our Super Sprinter, the Blond Bomb, the Rotterdam Rocket – you’re looking good!’

The compliment, laced with sarcasm, is directed at Jesper Lomers. The Dutchman regards Fabian with a smile and a shake of his head to conceal any hint of embarrassment. Fabian lifts a lock of Jesper’s hair. It is very blond, like straw, but soft, a little spiky here, charmingly floppy there.

‘That crazy magazine,’ Fabian remarks, referring to a recent adulatory article in Italian Vogue in which he and Jesper were featured, ‘they’ll be mourning when your hair is shorn within an inch of your scalp for the Tour. What was it that they wrote about your legs?’

Jesper waves his hand dismissively and busies himself tearing open a bread roll, buttering it well, yet not eating it.

This is good, Jules thinks, humour, laughter, the team is reacting well.

He answers on Jesper’s behalf. ‘The article said – team, listen up – Jesper Lomers has the most beautiful thighs in the peloton.’

The team fell about laughing.

Jesper shrugs. ‘They’re the tools of my trade, guys, the tools of my trade. I’m a good rider – not a sex symbol.’

‘Where’s the problem in being both,’ Fabian comments, knowing his own blend is consummate.

‘Anya would beg to differ, I’m sure,’ chips in a team member.

‘Anya wants to go back to Holland,’ Jesper says to everyone but looking steadily at Jules.