‘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.
‘And we want the green jersey,’ Jules responds, holding the eye contact whilst aware and pleased that the restaurant saw fit to serve him first, ‘and we want you, Jesper, to win it for us again this year.’ He regards his rider, one of the most consistent he has ever known. ‘The maillot vert is yours. You can take it again, your riding warrants it.’ Jules knows he can keep Fabian – a little flattery, a lot of money. Jesper he is not so sure about and it unnerves him.
I’ve never known a rider who can win so spectacularly but with such good grace. Nor have I known a rider so keen to kiss his wife whenever she’s at the start or the finish. Increasingly, though, she’s been at neither. It unnerves Jesper, I know. She wants to go home. And that unnerves me. Jesper must stay. She has plans. But so do I.
‘That’s why no wives,’ Jules, musing to himself over the three he’d regrettably suffered, proclaims. Luckily, Jesper is preoccupied dunking his bread into the soup like a tea bag and appears not to have heard, let alone taken offence. A couple of the other riders, however, shoot blade-sharp looks at their directeur. When they are sure he isn’t looking.
‘I ride better if I sleep better and I sleep well when I share with my wife,’ says one under his breath.
‘Vraiment,’ agrees the other. ‘I need a bed-mate on the Tour, not a room-mate. No offence.’
‘None taken,’ his team-mate confirms. ‘So, are we rooming again, this Tour?’
‘I would think so,’ the other shrugs. ‘I’ve requested it.’
‘So have I.’
‘You nervous?’ his team-mate asks, despite knowing it is a question that will never be answered directly.
‘You?’
Clever but fairly standard answer.
‘No Weakness,’ the rider proclaims as if it is some mantra.
‘Précisément!’ The team-mates, soon to be room-mates in lieu of their female bed- and soul-mates, chink glasses and drink the red wine as if it is nectar.
‘Jules, where’s Carlos?’
‘A Spaniard riding for a French team is a coup enough,’ Fabian interjects, touching his nose as if it is out of joint. ‘Can we really expect him to turn up any earlier than the last minute, for something as trivial as a team meal?’
Before Jules can answer on Carlos’s behalf, the waiters arrive with miniature portions of sorbet which everyone samples but, being tomato and basil sorbet (of which, undoubtedly, Django McCabe would have been proud), no one much likes.
Jules raises his glass of Burgundy. ‘Here’s to the jerseys. And they are most definitely plural. The yellow. The green. The polka dot. Fabian. Jesper. Carlos. Here’s to Système Vipère. Salut.’
‘Vive le Tour,’ says Fabian, gulping wine and then tucking into duck.
‘Vive le Tour,’ says Jesper, thinking of Anya, wishing she were here and apprehensive about a certain coldness that will greet him at home that night.
Carlos Jesu Velasquez had no compunction at being absent from the team dinner in France.
‘I am to spend over three weeks in your country so that night I will dine with my wife,’ he had said to Jules previously by telephone.
He must feel special, Jules had reasoned to himself, so I will make it seem a gesture of my respect that he needn’t be present for the dinner. Realistically, he would not add much in the way of scintillating conversation to the evening. In truth, it is not important to the team or the Tour whether he eats escargots with us or paella with his family.
Carlos Jesu Velasquez is nicknamed the Pocket Rocket, like the energy bars of that name which the riders carry with them, on account of his small stature but enormous potency. Carlos Jesu is also known as the Cicada for he speaks little. He speaks no other language than Spanish but even amongst the Spanish riders he is frugal with communication. He uses his tongue and his lips to address the peloton, hissing or clicking at riders to move away, to work with him, to get out of his line. Carlos is also known as the Little Lion, for when the little climber wins at a mountain finish he lets out a guttural roar utterly inconsistent with his diminutive size and quiet mien. His wife, Marie-Christina, however, calls him Jesu with a throatily pronounced ‘h’. His three children call him Papa.
This evening, he walked his three children across the street to his mother-in-law’s. He then went back to his house, closed the door and made love to Marie-Christina. Then he sang to her. Tomorrow, he will travel to Eustace St Pierre.
‘Away on business,’ he whispers soothingly to his wife, ‘but home again soon.’
If I were to meet the inimitable Fabian Ducasse, what exactly would I say? Cat wondered, on her way in to the Guardian office to discuss their requirements and other practicalities.
He’s famed as a womanizer, so should I concede that he might be more willing to talk, to grant me an audience, if I wore a skirt? I’d have to think of a slant – not just ‘Are you going to win the Tour de France, Monsieur Ducasse?’ Perhaps I could ask him about sport and adulation – would he do it if he didn’t get it? I want to tap in to that arrogance to see if it’s a front or genuine. Not that I care which – it has the desired effect on me for one.
Is there time to learn a little Spanish? Mind you, just a grunt from Carlos Jesu Velasquez would suffice. And how about Jesper? Is there anything that comes close to hearing English spoken with a Dutch accent?
I can’t believe I’m soon to be there. In France. With them. What’ll I say?
RACHEL McEWEN AND TEAM ZUCCA MV
‘Jesus!’ cried Massimo Lipari, grasping his left leg and stroking his hamstring tenderly. ‘Holy Mother Mary – you are in one fuck of a bad mood.’
Rachel McEwen looked down on the rider’s prostrate nakedness, his nether regions covered only by a towel, nappy-style; his lanky, lithe frame the colour of mocha ice-cream, which enabled him to skip up mountains like a gazelle, his huge brown eyes regarding her dolefully, full lips puckered into a somewhat theatrical pout. She looked at her hands, bit her lip and apologized.
‘I’m sorry, Mass,’ she said, using her hands more gently and reminding herself that his