Читать книгу The McCabe Girls Complete Collection: Cat, Fen, Pip, Home Truths - Freya North - Страница 28

Cat couldn’t believe she was singing ‘Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside’, but she was. She had started to hum it whilst cleaning her teeth and now, sweeping back the hotel curtains and looking out over the navy-blue water, she was singing it with gusto. She needed to call Taverner at the Guardian and Andy at Maillot, she had her Luca interview to transcribe and she planned to have everything wrapped up before lunch-time to warrant the rest of the day alone in Ben’s company.

‘First, I must find Josh. I’m not only going to tell him about He Who No Longer Exists but also about He Who Most Definitely Does. I owe it to Josh, he’s my pal and he cares about me.’

She went along to Josh’s room and knocked on the door. Josh grinned at her. ‘You like it, don’t you?’ he brandished.

‘Yes?’ she answered. ‘Do I? What?’

‘Cat McCabe,’ he smiled and then broke into song most operatically, ‘beside the seaside, beside the sea!’

‘Oh shit,’ Cat declared, hiding her face behind her hands.

‘The walls are paper thin,’ Josh said, casting a glance towards Alex’s room on the other side of his and shaking his head.

‘Was Alex singing too, then?’ Cat asked artlessly. Josh snorted but the explanation came soon enough in the form of a buxom woman opening Alex’s door, stepping out in to the corridor, rearranging her clothing, murmuring, ‘Ciao!’ back into the room and then nodding most courteously to Josh and Cat as she passed.

‘Fletcher!’ Josh cried once he’d closed his jaw, while Cat stood stock still and flabbergasted. ‘Bloody show yourself.’

Alex appeared, with a John Wayne swagger and a Benny Hill grin. ‘I’m shagged!’ he declared. Then he steadied his head with both hands and moaned, ‘I’m also still pissed, I think.’

‘What’s her name?’ Cat whispered.

‘Oh,’ Alex fumbled, waving the air dismissively, ‘Mary, Margaret, Molly – something like that,’ though he knew full well that her name was Maria Angelo because it had taken him most of the previous evening, his entire repertoire of chat-up lines, an exorbitant amount of Pernod and the false promise of Laurent Jalabert’s autograph to lure her back to his room. ‘Come on, I desperately need caffeine. And food. I need to replenish. I’m knackered. Shagged. Fucking hell.’

‘I’m going to the salle de pressé,’ said Cat, looking imploring at Josh who was looking reprovingly at Alex.

‘See you there,’ Josh said, glancing at Cat. ‘I’d better chaperone this jerk all the way.’

‘Oh,’ faltered Cat, ‘OK.’

‘Are you going to transcribe your Luca tape?’ Josh asked.

‘Yes,’ Cat said pensively. She tried to communicate via loaded glances but, whereas Rachel would have read her perfectly, Josh just thought he had shaving cream on his cheek or toothpaste on his lips or sleep dust in his eyes. ‘If you have a mo’,’ Cat said to Josh, realizing Alex was too distracted and hungover to eavesdrop, ‘I wanted to talk – remember?’

‘Oh sure, yes of course,’ said Josh. ‘Later? After breakfast?’

Cat nodded, hoping that a slightly worried twitch of her eyebrows would signify that she wanted to talk in private too.

‘But Luca won the bloody fucking Stage yesterday,’ Cat fulminated in fine salle de pressé style down the phone to Andy at Maillot, ‘and I’ve got an exclusive.’ Andy pointed out that she had interviewed Luca before he was a Tour de France Stage winner. ‘How about a fun little piece on how the riders spend the Repos?’ Cat suggested, undeterred.

‘Who’ve you got?’

‘Um – not a problem.’

‘Sure, but who?’

‘It’s no problem – honestly. Who do you want?’

‘Cat,’ Andy cautioned.

‘Any news on my job?’ she continued, thinking her idea for a Rest Day vignette very good and wondering to whom else she could pitch it.

‘Not as yet,’ said Andy.

Frustrated but not discouraged, Cat plugged an earpiece into her dictaphone and set Luca’s interview running. Alex and Josh arrived when she was half-way through it. Ben rang her at much the same time as the boys beeped their laptops into life.

‘Hurry up,’ was how he greeted her, ‘I’m horny.’

It gave her the impetus to decline a coffee break, to concentrate hard on Luca’s gems and hardly touch the pause or rewind buttons.

‘The only humping for me will be going up and down those fucking mountains.’

Darling Luca.

‘Are you nervous?’ Cat murmured out loud, in sync with her final question to the rider.

‘That is not a question for me to answer,’ she replied, alongside Luca in her ear. And then she remembered asking him if he was scared and he’d nodded and it wouldn’t have come out on tape and she’d never impart his answer anyway. Finished. Done. She set her dictaphone to rewind, saved her work, flexed her over-exerted fingers, raised her eyebrow at Alex who looked ghastly but self-satisfied and raised her eyebrow at Josh, hoping he’d read it as a request for a moment’s privacy.

‘Finished?’ he asked.

‘Yup,’ said Cat, her eyebrow still at work. Her phone rang. It was Ben.

‘Get your gorgeous ass over here, McCabe. I have wheels, wine and wanton wishes. Come on!’

My slate is clear – it’s Fate! thought Cat, gathering her things enthusiastically.

‘Did you want to nip out?’ Josh asked, seeing that Alex was staring gormlessly into the middle distance. ‘For a quick chat?’

‘Oh,’ said Cat, suddenly flummoxed, ‘later – would that be OK? I mean, I wouldn’t want to prolong your work – it is the Repos.’

‘Sure,’ said Josh, ‘can I borrow your Luca tape?’

‘Sure,’ said Cat, handing over her dictaphone, a swarm of butterflies making her all but float out of the salle de pressé with huge anticipation, much lust, a sizeable smile and a veritable gleam in her eyes.

If the salle de pressé was like the university library at the end of term, airy, fresh-smelling, laid back and less than half full; the town of Le Cap D’Arp was like a cycling holiday camp. Cat was passed by Tour de France riders in little posses twiddling through town on their way out for a few hours to keep their legs turning. On the beach, Cat noted those who’d trained early and who were now sunbathing in a futile bid to neutralize the demarcation of their bronzed legs, necks and arms from their lily-white T-shirt chests and pale feet and hands. Elsewhere, others were with their families, being treated like royalty by the local cafés and those not in view were obviously indulging in time and space with their wives and girlfriends. Or being massaged. Or playing computer games. Or sleeping. Vasily Jawlensky had become the Pied Piper of cycling; when he left his hotel with Fugallo to ride, scores of kids, teenagers, amateurs and fans pedalled alongside, behind, some even taking their chance in front; everyone smiling. A little way out of town, Vasily glanced at Gianni and the two of them streamed onwards, giving the impression that their followers had come to a complete standstill though they all continued to pedal their hearts out.

Directeurs sportifs sat in the bars, mobile phones at the ready. Journalists not at work took the opportunity to launder their backlog of smalls. Mechanics played volleyball on the beach; soigneurs shopped locally for bananas and Vaseline and honey and fabric conditioner for sensitive skin. Cat passed Jules Le Grand, two mobile phones on his brasserie table, a clutch of fans and journalists hovering near by. He tipped his head to one side and proffered his hand which she took and shook whilst he stood and kissed her on both cheeks before taking his seat, answering one phone, having to switch the other to his messaging service. Where was Rachel, Cat wondered? Was Vasily back? Would he and Rachel sneak any time together? She’d phone later. Anything and everything could wait till later. For now, her undivided attention was for Ben.

Initially, she felt a little shy when she saw him, half-wondering whether she should repeat and reaffirm all she told him the night before. Tenderly, he put his hand around the back of her neck and kissed her softly on the lips.

‘Allons?’ she smiled.

‘Not quite,’ he replied. ‘I have to have you – and now. I won’t be able to think straight let alone drive straight and my trousers won’t hang straight, otherwise.’ He led her to his room and made love to her urgently, panting her name as he came, his orgasm precipitated by hearing her call him God and Ben as she climaxed. She felt fantastic to him; tight and hot and extremely wet. It was flattering, immensely arousing, and he was rock hard for her in return. They lay, Ben on his back, Cat on her stomach, Ben grinning at the ceiling, Cat smiling into the pillows, before he gave her buttocks a rap of friendly slaps. ‘Come on, McCabe, we’re going for a little excursion.’

He drove down the coast towards Perpignan where they ate moules and frites, drank cold, innocuous lager and strolled amongst the boats licking ice-cream from cornets. He now knew all about Fen and Pip, the layout of Cat’s flat, Django’s dress sense and culinary proclivities and the quite overwhelming fact that Cat’s mother had run off with a cowboy from Denver when her daughters were very young.

‘I’m not a million miles from Denver,’ Ben said, as they sat on the harbour wall, swinging their legs, ‘you could try and locate her when you come to visit.’ Cat smiled a little bashfully and glanced at Ben. ‘You will come and visit me,’ he stated. She nodded confirmation and then grinned inanely whilst the boats bobbed and Ben stroked her bare knee.

Cat learnt about Ben’s background, about his somewhat burdonsome mother, about his father with whom he didn’t really connect, about Amelia of whom Ben said he rarely thought. Ben didn’t learn much about He Who No Longer Exists because Cat said there wasn’t much to say.

After all, he no longer exists, does he? Certainly he no longer warrants personal pronoun capitalization.

‘Ben,’ said Cat contemplatively as they drove back mid-afternoon. She looked at his cheek and placed the back of her hand softly against it.

‘Yep?’ he replied, his eyes leaving the road momentarily, alighting on Cat’s for a second yet scorching her to the core instantly.

‘Who did you think I was?’

He glanced at her again; she was gazing out of the window. ‘I mean, when you thought I had a bloke already. You must have thought me something of a slapper, right?’

Ben did not reply.

‘A sure shag,’ Cat pressed, ‘pussy that puts out – right?’

‘Wrong,’ said Ben thoughtfully, doing much mirror-checking. Cat looked at him but he did not take his eyes from the road. ‘I was disappointed,’ he said, a few kilometres later, ‘– not in you so much, but in the situation. However, believing you had a boyfriend actually didn’t make me want you any less. It didn’t make me want you any more either – because I was at my pinnacle of desire anyway.’ He glanced at himself in the rear-view mirror, called himself a soft bastard but was unable to do anything about his grin.

‘I don’t have a boyfriend,’ said Cat, firmly but quietly, seeing from the wing mirror that the blush she felt within had manifested itself in virulent scarlet across her cheeks.

‘No,’ Ben said, ‘you only have me. And I don’t have a girlfriend.’

‘No,’ said Cat, ‘just me. And this is the Tour de France.’

‘The Tour de France,’ said Ben, ‘and it’s over half-way through.’

Something quite ghastly is going to befall Cat on a day hitherto as close to perfection as she’s ever known. She feels simultaneously peaceful and utterly exhilarated, as only being on the brink of falling headlong in love with someone can instil. Perhaps she shouldn’t fall in love with Ben, not if she’s sensible and considers that the Tour is over half-way through and her beau lives in Boulder. But how can you decide not to fall in love with someone? Especially if you’ve already been treated to a glimpse of the potential that such a state could provide. It would be pointless. It would be impossible.

However, Cat’s euphoric state is going to be shattered, her world is going to go haywire and her confidence is going to collapse. Worst of all, she will soon doubt her standing as a respected member of the Tour de France family. I have no idea how she’ll cope or how she’ll recover or why this has to happen to her. She deserves an easy ride, after all, doesn’t she?

It’s a beautiful day. She wants to go for a swim in the sea later. With Ben. Have a long, boozy supper, with Ben, perhaps with Rachel and the others too. Sleep with Ben tonight and wake up in the same bed as him tomorrow. She could even stroll through the village départ hand in hand with him. First, though, she has to go to the salle de pressé. She is ready and eager to confess to Josh, to hug him and thank him and apologize for the fact that she spun him a yarn she should have unknotted days ago. So she’s going to the salle de pressé, a spring in her step, a head-turning smile on her lips and in her eyes, energy and well-being instilled in her every move. I’m sorry. Poor Cat.

Alex and Josh were at home and happy in the salle de pressé on the Repos. They had no pressing urge to swim or stroll. To pack up at tea-time, as they intended to do, was treat enough. They liked it that the pace was down a gear, that the salle was populated today only by the diehard cycling enthusiasts who masquerade as journalists.

‘Would you mind finishing the last part of the tape?’ Josh, who types at a fraction of Cat’s speed, asked Alex. ‘I hate transcribing. It means we need only do it the once between us.’

‘Sure,’ said Alex, yawning, ‘sounds about all I’m capable of today. Fuck, I’m shagged.’

‘I’ll go and get caffeine,’ Josh informed. Alex fiddled with the earpiece before deciding to dispense with it. He set the tape running, turned up the volume, and transcribed from where Josh had left off. When Josh returned with coffee, Alex paused the tape and drank the liquid as if it were nectar.

‘Good old Luca,’ Alex laughed, ‘he says the only humping he’ll be doing is going up and down the mountains – “the fucking mountains”!’

‘God,’ said Josh, rewinding the machine, ‘did Cat just ask him if he was nervous?’

They listened. ‘Yeah,’ Alex confirmed, ‘but he didn’t bloody reply. We’ll have to ask her if he gesticulated positively or negatively or whether he kept a poker face. Fuck, she just asked him if he’s scared.’

‘No reply. I think that’s probably about it,’ Josh surmised, flicking down the volume.

‘I’ll just check,’ said Alex, turning the sound up again.

How long do you have? a male voice but not Luca’s seeps out of the dictaphone, Because I have about seven inches.

I have to write my report, a female voice, too British and unmistakable to be anyone other than Catriona McCabe, journaliste, le Guardian, is heard to reply.

All heads in the salle de pressé turn to Alex and Josh and Cat’s dictaphone; delighted, flabbergasted, hungry for more. Thank God only a third of the press men are working.

I want you now, the man is murmuring amidst much rustling.

You can have me now, the English girl replies whilst bedsprings creak.

There is the sound of deep, desirous breathing and some laughter and some moaning and some bed bouncing. Penetration or not – and the recording doesn’t divulge – it is indisputable what has been recorded; it is obviously an aural sex show and the press men are transfixed.

‘Come on,’ Josh tells Alex, ‘switch the fucker off.’ But neither of them silence the machine because both of them know they are listening to Cat and Ben.

Don’t stop, the girl pleads.

‘Whoa whoa whoa,’ says Alex, grabbing the dictaphone but not touching the volume, let alone switching the thing off.

Now! the girl is remonstrating when the man tells her ‘Later’. She is panting and gasping and audibly on the verge of orgasm.

Cat came into the salle de pressé just as she was about to come on tape. And when she came in, all eyes were on her in the here and now whilst all ears were still trained to her in the then and there. There was silence amongst the press corps. But not from the dictaphone.

‘But I want you – I do – now!’

Cat was rooted to the spot.

‘Look on this as a taster – I’m going to whisk you away tonight, I know of a place. It’s private and beautiful and we’re going to have sex there.’

Cat remembered distinctly how, at that point, Ben had had his fingers inside her. And even if she’d forgotten, the sound of her rhythmic, lust-urgent breathing would have reminded her.

Isn’t technology marvellous! How sensitive dictaphones are! See, it can pick up and project the unmistakable rasps and clicks of two people kissing and it can preserve crystal clear and loud the sound of Cat imploring, ‘Don’t go – oh God, Ben!’ It is a shame that the salle de presse isn’t quite so sensitive to allow a private situation to remain so. But can you blame them? Have you ever heard anything like it? Luca Jones. Sex. Gossip. On the Tour de France. Compulsive listening. I dare anyone to switch it off.

What did Cat do? What could she do? What do you think she did? What would you do?

She gave a strangled yelp. She turned on her heels. She ran. Fast. Just to get the fuck away from there. And fast. It probably wasn’t the most logical thing to do, nor the most constructive because it would of course make her return – and she would have to return, it was her job – all the more difficult. But she acted on impulse, reacted to the sheer horror of it all, and all her senses barring common sense had told her to bolt.

Was the dictaphone then switched off? What? And miss Ben having his private wank? The tape must run to the end. After all, say Luca came back with a fantastic quote? Fast forward? No, no – wouldn’t want to run down the batteries.

I could fly home from Toulouse.

But you’d have to inform Taverner at the Guardian.

And he’d want to know why.

And then, of course, so will Maillot.

And yarn-spinning obviously lands me in more trouble than the truth.

Plus, if you left under a cloud, you’d have no control over the way this whole débâcle will be recounted.

Jesus. Before you can say maillot jaune, legend will have me live on video shagging the entire Megapac team.

How long have you been sitting there? It’s drawing to dusk. Isn’t the sand damp and your bottom wet?

I didn’t go to the hotel for fear of being followed. I found this secluded chink away from the main beach. There are rock pools. The sand is dry.

There is a funny side, Cat, you do know that? But you alone can orchestrate the way this afternoon is preserved for posterity.

I know. It would only take Rachel or my sisters to point it out, but I’m actually too humiliated to contact anyone. Even Ben.

Instead, Cat opted out of the present tense and sat a while longer, by herself. She analysed how the clouds simpered up to the moon and over it, having their edges singed brown like the circumference on a cup of espresso coffee. Then she made the clouds appear to stand still so that she imagined the stars to be making a reverential pilgrimage towards the moon. Then she saw the night clouds as a slow, silent procession; like a line of melancholy people moving quietly, secretly away. Finally, she scoured the sky for the constellations she knew and she mused a while on how, at different times and in different places, she’d seen Cassiopeia as a W, an M and a 3. Finally, she admitted that such meanderings were just pointless displacement activities and that facts had to be faced and that faces had to be braved.

So she switches on her mobile phone. There are six messages. Rachel wants to know if she’d like to have tea and a window shop. Ben says hasn’t she finished her work yet, he thought she was just going to the salle de pressé to retrieve her stuff. Josh says Cat, where are you, please call, he’s worried. Alex says you’re cool, McCabe, don’t worry about it, your street cred has just rocketed. Ben tells her he’s just spoken to Josh, asks her to call, call now. Josh implores her to call, please Cat, just call.

It is because Cat can feel their affection and detect no ridicule that she decides she won’t be flying home from Toulouse. She knows she will be able to enter the salle de pressé tomorrow, even if she won’t quite be able to hold her head high. Who to phone? Who else.

‘Josh?’

‘Cat,’ Josh sighs, relieved, delighted, ‘where the fuck are you?’

‘Oh,’ Cat says, a wavering voice coming through more clearly than her breezy tone, ‘just sitting. Having a think.’

‘Do you want company?’ Josh asks.

‘Can we just chat on the phone?’ Cat replies, dipping her fingertips into a rock pool.

‘Sure,’ Josh says.

‘Josh, I’m so sorry,’ Cat says, hugging her knees and wishing she was hugging him.

‘You don’t need to be,’ Josh assures her.

‘No, I do,’ Cat confirms, her voice breaking, ‘I lied to you and I don’t feel good about that and I should have set records straight ages ago.’

‘About the non-existent boyfriend?’

‘Yes,’ Cat gasps, ‘how do you know about him?’

Josh wasn’t about to tell her that he was in Rachel’s room, eating cereal, with the Zucca MV soigneur and the Megapac doctor trying to hear both sides of the conversation. ‘I didn’t know you then,’ Cat was continuing, ‘when I, um, fibbed.’

‘Fibbed!’ Josh laughs. ‘It was a fucking whopper!’

‘I know,’ Cat concedes, trying to lean back against a rock but finding it singularly uncomfortable, ‘I know. But I did it for many reasons, many of them daft but mainly for my own security.’

‘I understand,’ says Josh honestly because, after lengthy conversations with both Ben and Rachel, he does.

‘I adore you, Josh,’ Cat says from the heart, clutching hers for unseen emphasis, ‘I truly value our friendship and I hope I haven’t hurt you.’

Josh smiles. He’s glad Ben and Rachel didn’t hear that. He wants to keep it for himself. He’s touched.

‘So,’ Cat says, ‘I’m not an immoral slapper.’

‘Good God no!’ Josh replies with great affection. ‘You’re just a sex-crazed compulsive liar.’

To be teased in such a way but with such affection at such a time is a true tonic for Cat and she is further soothed by Josh imploring her to come to the Zucca MV hotel to raid Rachel’s veritable grocery store.

‘Have you been with Rachel, then,’ Cat asks, ‘this whole time?’

‘Yes,’ says Josh, ‘and Ben’s here too.’

Cat poked her head around Rachel’s door with her eyes trained firmly on the carpet. She noted Rachel was wearing pretty sandals, Ben was in his lovely Docksiders and Josh was in trainers. Very slowly, she let her gaze travel upwards over three pairs of legs of varying degrees of hirsuteness. Rachel was sitting in a chair, Ben and Josh were on the edge of her bed. Gradually, Cat lifted her head and finally her eyes alighted on the three faces. Rachel was shaking hers slowly, with a wry smile etched across her lips. Josh had tilted his, broadcasting a supportive smile as loudly as he could. Ben was simply looking at her.

God, you’re gorgeous, Cat.

‘Hullo,’ Cat said to all asunder, bashfully.

‘Do you want some food?’ Rachel asked, rising and slipping her hand around Cat’s waist, giving her a squeeze.

‘Yes, please,’ said Cat, shuffling further into the room.

‘Fuck it, Cat, you mad girl,’ Josh said, coming over and enveloping her in a bear hug. He kissed her cheek with a sonorous ‘mmwah!’ and then helped himself to a banana which he munched thoughtfully.

When Cat had consumed two bowls of cereal and a yoghurt, Ben yawned, stretched and rose. ‘Come on, you,’ he said, going to her and running his fingers through her hair. Cat knew she blushed at the sudden public display of his affection, but up she stood obediently, beamed gratitude at Rachel and said, ‘Come, Josh, let’s go.’

Josh, Ben and Cat strolled leisurely back to their hotel. Every now and then, Cat glanced gratefully at the moon, checked on Cassiopeia’s whereabouts and observed that the queue of clouds had dispersed. It was going to be a fine day tomorrow.

The journalists’ hotel was small and the foyer served as an impromptu bar. Alex was there with the buxom woman, ensconced in sagging seats and surrounded by several empty bottles of Seize.

‘Cat McCabe!’ he bellowed, unravelling his gangly limbs, extricating himself from the capacious chair and the drape of the woman. He loped over to her, picked her up off the floor, swung her around and then deposited her somewhat cack-handedly. ‘Cat McCabe,’ he said again, with a veritable twinkle in his eye, ‘you little vixen you.’ Then he turned to Ben. ‘You’re a wanker of a bastard,’ he praised the doctor, ‘you’re loathed and envied by the entire salle de pressé right now.’ Ben thanked him courteously for the compliment, Cat kissed Alex goodnight and raised her eyebrow quite saucily in reference to Mary or Margaret or Molly.

‘Maria,’ Alex whispered. Cat winked and they left Alex to his questionable yet obviously relatively effective seduction.

‘Sweet dreams,’ Cat said to Josh, laying her hand on his arm before hugging him tightly.

‘You too,’ Josh grinned. ‘Night, Ben.’

‘Goodnight,’ said Ben.

Cat had the most horrendous headache, slicing right across her brow and searing into the centre of her skull. Ben said that, ironically, the best cure for a headache was sex. Cat was happy to believe him and needed no spoonful of sugar to facilitate such medicine. He was a doctor. She trusted him.