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 is starting in five minutes or so.’
‘God, I almost forgot,’ said Fen, untying and then rebunching her pony-tail two or three times, the telephone receiver tucked under her chin. ‘Does Pip know?’
‘Isn’t she with you?’ Django enquired, a little perturbed. For some reason, Fen actually looked around her flat before replying.
‘No, she isn’t – should she be?’
‘Well, you two live in the same town, I thought perhaps you’d be sharing the experience together.’
‘Django,’ Fen laughed, ‘London’s a sprawling metropolis. I don’t think the bike race is an experience I, or Pip, have been waiting with bated breath for.’
‘I didn’t really mean that,’ said Django, ‘not those shiny boys and bikes themselves, I meant your sister. I meant Cat. This is her experience – I think we should take an interest.’
Fen felt humbled. Suddenly, she wished Pip was here. ‘You’re right,’ she said quietly, ‘maybe we might catch Cat on screen. She’s there, after all, in the thick of it. So we should switch on and tune in.’
‘And share,’ mused Django, quite relieved he was on his own and could have his biscuits to himself.
‘Don’t worry about phoning Pip, I’ll do that right now,’ Fen said. ‘You warm the TV up,’ she told her uncle, using a phrase Cat had frequently employed in childhood.
(‘Cat? Where have you disappeared to? Pip’s clearing the table. Fen’s washing up and there’s a tea towel with your name on it.’
‘Oh. Sorry. I was just warming the TV up.’)
‘Hey, Pip, it’s me.’
‘Hi, Fen. Get off the phone. The Tour de France is about to start.’
Half an later, the phone lines of Django, Fen and Pip were jammed engaged as each tried to contact the other. Ten minutes on, Pip arrived at Fen’s flat and they called Django together.
‘Wasn’t that exciting!’ Django boomed, wishing they could see the two uneaten biscuits as proof.
‘It was,’ Fen agreed, ‘I had no idea!’ Pip, bobbing up and down on the spot, took the phone from her.
‘That famous bloke won!’ she exclaimed breathlessly. ‘I remember Cat talking about him.’ She handed the telephone back to Fen and executed a handstand against the wall in celebration.
‘Josh,’ Cat asked, ‘might you cast your expert eye over my piece?’ Though she was confident about the quality of her copy, her request had a twofold function. She was rather proud of her first race report and felt it warranted immediate approval before she wired it to London. Also, she still wanted to consolidate her new colleague’s respect for her journalistic abilities and her cycle sport knowledge. Josh was flattered, more so when Alex looked up from his laptop, regarded Cat with a ‘Why not me?’ glance and bestowed on Josh a glare that said ‘Wanker!’ a little enviously.
‘I like it that you’ve explained the gap of 53 seconds between first and last rider being in contrast to the hours that will develop as the race progresses,’ Josh defined and read on, sometimes to himself, sometimes out loud.
During a day in which the sun shone unabated and lively crowds chanted indiscriminately, Britain’s Chris Boardman, riding for the French team Crédit Agricole, equalled the great French rider Bernard Hinault’s five Prologue triumphs. He turned a heavy gear throughout, his extraordinary aerodynamic position complementing his futuristic Time Trial bike whose handlebars he designed himself.
‘Good for Chris,’ Cat mused, recalling the rider’s consummate Time Trial. ‘Might we raise a glass to him tonight?’
Aren’t I being brave, organizing après-race activities!
Alex,