The McCabe Girls Complete Collection: Cat, Fen, Pip, Home Truths

‘Split beavers?’ asked Pip soberly.

‘Perfect,’ said Rachel, ‘only try to find bodies where, if there is a face, it’s a pretty one. Bugger the readers’ wives and fuck the ones with so much silicone that their nipples spread out like a rash. Just go for the bimbos – I really want to treat the boys.’

In the front seat of the Système Vipère team car, Fabian Ducasse is pugnaciously silent and aggressively focused. Jules Le Grand is driving him down L’Alpe D’Huez, down the very mountain which the day before Fabian had ascended in his own funeral cortège. He stares straight ahead, not looking at the road, the gradient, the debris from yesterday. His eyes, today the colour of graphite and as seemingly insensate as the rock of the fearsome Alp itself, give nothing away. Fabian’s aquiline features are as sharp as the boulders. A scar scores through his soul in much the same way as the road slices into the mountain. Behind closed lips, his teeth are clenched. However, the external manifestation of his inner turmoil is one of brooding steady focus; he resolutely refuses to allow any hint of emotional turbulence to be visible. It’s strategy. The media must not know. Nor must any rider in the peloton. Nor, he thinks somewhat deludedly, must his directeur.

But it is Jules’s job to be in tune with his riders; though he has read Fabian’s condition in a glance, he knows that diplomacy is crucial if the great rider is to race well today. Personally, Jules detests seeing his team leader back in regular Système Vipère colours; Fabian looks wrong somehow, like he’s in mufti after eight days wearing the yellow jersey. Though his primary concern is for Fabian’s physical and mental recovery, Jules is also thinking of the Système Vipère sponsors, intending to phone them, reassure them, flatter them, once the Stage is under way. Jules has hardly spoken to Fabian because he knows there is little the rider wants to hear. When Fabian finished the Stage yesterday, Jules had grasped his shoulders, shaken him until eye contact was established and said, ‘Bien, Fabian, bien.’ Jules curses the fact that the only way to today’s start is down the very route that decimated his rider the day before, stripping him of his maillot jaune. Jules is painfully aware of the irony that L’Alpe D’Huez, in glorious sunshine, looks positively Sound of Music this morning.

‘Can he reclaim the maillot jaune?’ was a question posed to Jules by fans, by TV, by phone and in the press conference yesterday.

‘Tomorrow is another high mountain Stage,’ Jules had replied nonchalantly, ‘and there is of course another Time Trial to go.’

He had not said this to Fabian. There was nothing that could be said to Fabian that Fabian wouldn’t have told himself already, time and again.

Fen and Pip caught a ride to the Col de la Madeleine with another Zucca MV soigneur, a quietly spoken man with whom they conversed sparingly in pidgin Anglo-Franco-Italian. He felt it his greater duty to consolidate his passengers’ burgeoning passion for the sport by driving them along the race route than to go direct to the hotel to unpack for the riders. From Vizille, the summer seat of many a French president, through the Chatreuse Massif, they journeyed on a road laid down by Napoleon, unaware that the day was to bring a French revolution in the form of Fabian Ducasse’s comeback. Pip and Fen were seduced by pretty chalets in sleepy mountain villages where, in July, the Christmas lights were still up because the ski season alone defined such places’ existence.

Sunflowers, lavender and cow parsley provided a gentle aesthetic antidote to the rock faces on which firs clung precariously. Local women, laying claim to their favourite spectating spots, sat under parasols, compounding Fen and Pip’s feeling that they were driving through an Impressionist painting. Until, that is, the tifosi began to gather in force and en masse, their sodden clothes from yesterday drying on mountain safety barriers, shrubs, even the tarmac itself. The sisters grinned proudly while the fans cheered, waved and rang huge cow bells as the Zucca MV car passed by.

‘Madeleine,’ said the soigneur with hushed reverence, stopping the car near the summit of the great mountain. ‘Please,’ he said, hand on heart, as if it were his grave responsibility, ‘I wish you to have a very good day.’

‘Mille grazie,’ said Fen.

‘Trille zille grazie,’ said Pip.

‘Prego,’ said the soigneur with a humble but flattered shrug and smile, ‘prego.’

‘Everyone is so lovely,’ Fen remarked to Pip as a vast Spanish family made room at the roadside for them, and an elderly German woman whose face was painted like her national flag offered them cold sausages.

‘It’s like a huge family,’ Pip agreed, thanking three young Spanish boys for sharing their orange juice. ‘I can’t believe you’re making me go home tonight.’

‘I have to go to work tomorrow,’ Fen bemoaned, wanting to stay in the Alps, stay on for the Time Trial, for Paris, rather than head home to trying times and impossible choices.

‘And Ben is going to drive us to the station in Grenoble,’ said Pip. ‘He’s lovely, isn’t he?’

‘It’s only about 70 k from Gilbertville,’ Fen retorted, wondering how on earth she had the space in her mind to be confused about Ben when she was dithering over two men of her own. ‘Wouldn’t you rather Alex drove us?’ Fen crossed her arms and raised her eyebrow at her sister who almost choked on her orange juice before brandishing a very wicked smile.

‘Naughty Philippa,’ Pip chastized herself with great pride.

‘And?’ Fen pressed.

‘Who would have thought the Tour de France was sex and drugs and rock and roll?’ Pip marvelled as a nearby Danish contingent danced terribly to terrible Europop and a Dutch posse enjoyed cake whose main ingredient was obviously far more mood-enhancing than just flour, butter, eggs and sugar.

In the Gilbertville salle de pressé, a large marquee by the Arly river, Cat sat on a rickety plastic chair as if it were a veritable throne.

Taverner didn’t cut a bloody word! she marvelled to herself and anyone else who chanced upon the Guardian, spread before her. If this doesn’t swing the favour of the Maillot office, what the fuck will?

‘Andy? This is Cat McCabe in Gilbertville.’

‘Hullo, Cat McCabe in Gilbertville,’ said Andy from offices in Pentonville.

‘Have you seen the Guardian?’ Cat said, trying hard not to squeak with excitement, nor sound deflated when Andy said he hadn’t. ‘Well, I gave Taverner twice as much as he’d asked for and he hasn’t cut a word.’

‘And Maillot would want to employ a girl who doesn’t do as she’s told?’ came the response, the tongue in cheek not being audible via mobile phone. Cat hung up and speed-read yesterday’s article to keep despondency at bay. ‘I need a break,’ she said quietly, ‘I deserve the chance.’

Fabian Ducasse wanted a break too, but the peloton were still bruised from the previous Stage, their bodies bewildered by the sudden heat, so they rode together in an unspoken ceasefire. Fabian’s team-mate Carlos Jesu Velasquez, the dethroned King of the Mountains, had conquered the first three narrow twisting mountain passes to bring him within spitting distance of the polka dot jersey Massimo Lipari had taken from him yesterday. No one went for broke on the penultimate climb, the Grand Cucheron, so there were no great time gaps as the riders raced in the still, dry, high heat along 40 kilometres of flat roads towards the Col de la Madeleine.

There, Fen was tanning nicely and Pip’s nose was starting to burn a little until she caught a souvenir baseball cap flung from the publicity caravan. The vibe of the approaching race could be felt from way off and the McCabe sisters were soon standing in anticipation with the excited hordes, ten people to every metre along the climb of the Madeleine. A whisper surged through the crowds that Fabian had launched a surprise attack in the lower reaches. Those further up could not witness it but ears were glued to radios and, in the salle de presse, eyes were stuck to the TV screens. What Cat saw she deemed to be nothing short of genius and she intended to tell her Guardian readers just that.

Fabian Ducasse read astutely not only the requirements of the 19.5 km climb of the Madeleine, but also the state of his rivals’ minds and bodies. As the 7.6 per cent ascent commenced, he appeared tired – continually dropping off the back of his small lead group and then labouring hard to claw his way back. Ultimately, he was calling their bluff. Suddenly he steamed from the back and headed off at speed, plucking Velasquez with him. Sitting deep and resolute in the saddle, his shoulders steady, his gear arrogantly huge, his body appeared to snub the gradient of the climb. His Spanish team-mate and grimpeur extraordinaire, stood on his pedals and danced alongside the Système Vipère leader. Zucca MV’s Jawlensky launched a counter-attack immediately, assisted by the heroic Gianni Fugallo – arguably the super domestique of the Tour. However, having offered Vasily his slipstream in the Pyrenees and the Alps, having worked tirelessly to bring Stefano Sassetta to the sprint finishes of the first week, today Fugallo only managed to haul his team leader two thirds of the way up the Madeleine before dropping back. It was enough, however, to keep the Russian strategically close to his Système Vipère adversaries and Fugallo’s efforts were instrumental in ensuring that the maillot jaune stays with Zucca MV tonight.

While Fen and Pip were too high up to see the super domestique at work, they would later see what Cat could not: how ravaged a state Fugallo was in. The pictures beamed in to the salle de pressé focused on the race lead, not the domestique struggling with the mountain in a body struggling to cope. Fen and Pip yelled and leapt as Fabian and Carlos, and soon enough Vasily, passed by.

‘I can’t believe I’ve been so self-centred with my Evian,’ Pip said in horror, watching the fans pour water over the riders as they passed. ‘You can have one last sip, Fen,’ she said.

‘Look at all these people,’ Fen marvelled, taking two sips less than she actually required, ‘they’re like an ever-converging corridor, stepping aside but a wheel away from the approaching riders.’

‘If you were a dog,’ Pip reasoned, scanning downhill for the cyclists, ‘you’d have to wag your tail up and down, it’s so narrow. Here they come!’

‘Two and a half minutes off the lead,’ said Fen, checking her watch and focusing on four specks of lycra approaching. ‘Look! Someone’s bolted off.’

‘Lipari! Lipari!’ sang neighbouring Italians who’d been most generous with their Amaretti biscuits and their Amaretto, and they burst into the Zucca MV climber’s Giro pop tune.

‘Will he catch them?’ Fen wondered. ‘Fabian and Carlos and Vasily?’

‘He’s Massimo,’ one Italian said to her, raising his hands as if her question bordered on blasphemy, ‘of course he catch them – he eat them!’

‘Indians,’ says Hunter to Luca in a group of twelve, 24 minutes behind the leaders.

‘What?’ says Luca, who feels surprisingly strong but is riding carefully.

‘Indians,’ Hunter repeats, nodding ahead. Luca follows his gaze and his heart drops.

‘Oh fuck,’ he gasps, ‘no way, man, no fuckin’ way.’

He’d thought the summit couldn’t possibly be much further off. But, as he looks ahead, he spies lines of fans in the distance, snaking up and around the mountain, a zig-zag of spectators demarcating horribly clearly the severity and length of the route to the summit.

‘You can do it,’ Hunter says, ‘we can both make it.’

‘We can,’ says Luca, ‘but I’m not sure about poor Fugallo. Shit, did you see the state he was in?’

Still none of the McCabes knew how Gianni Fugallo was suffering. When Luca’s bunch neared Pip and Fen, Pip glanced at her sister, beamed a smile of inordinate proportions, grabbed the bottle of Evian and ran along the tarmac splashing the water over as many riders as she could. Cat saw her sister on the press TV, thought that’s my girl and wondered if any of the riders were as drenched as Pip appeared to be. But, with the three leaders beginning the descent, the cameras focused on the head of the race and Cat did not see Gianni Fugallo limp his way up the Madeleine, almost thirty minutes behind.

Fen and Pip, of course, did, It was the most repulsive yet poignant, heart-rending yet stomach-churning sight.

‘What’s that?’ Fen gasped in horror though she knew the answer, eyes hopelessly transfixed by the cyclist’s legs.

‘It’s shit,’ Pip whispered, staring in horror at what appeared to be trickles of slurry coursing their way down.

‘It’s fucking dysentery,’ Fen exclaimed, with revulsion but more with sublime respect that someone suffering so much, so publicly, was doggedly climbing a mountain by bike and obviously had every intention of finishing the Stage.