French Revolutions

enquire.
    ‘Tim here just did the Aubisque and
Hautacam in one day,’ chipped in Nick on cue. I nodded slowly and fixed a flinty
yet mystical gaze on the mist now smudging out the peaks above.
    ‘Nah, well, no really big ones,’ said
Rhys mildly. ‘I shouldn’t really be doing this at all — the doctors told me my
back wasn’t up to it, and my ankle joints never fused properly when I was a
kid. The pain’s pretty bad after the first hour. But I guess you know all about
pain after yesterday! ’
    We drank beer until it rained, Jan
retiring to put the kids to bed and hone the website that had attracted Rhys,
Nick disappearing into the kitchen to do quite outstanding things with ducks
and flageolet beans. Rhys and I sheltered in the bar/garage, watching the Tour
of Italy on Eurosport and playing about with Nick’s turbo trainer, a bike with
its front wheel removed and the back one wedged between resistance rollers. It
was good to exchange road tales, the fly-swallowing and the loose chippings,
though my rigged coronation as King of the Mountains loomed shamefully over the
conversation. Rhys knew nothing about bike racing but plenty about bikes, and
every time he started talking about gear ratios I tutted gutturally in what was
supposed to be a matey don’t-let’s-talk-shop fashion and dramatically changed
the subject.
    This tactic was additionally employed
over dinner to probe the motives for Rhys’s extended journey, which at his
stage of life I was fairly hopeful would involve some unspeakable lifestyle
apocalypse: the gay affair that forced a messy divorce, a border-hopping
white-collar-crime spree. But no: he’d been a civil engineer with the same firm
for fifteen years and like all Australians was therefore eligible for three
months paid leave. His wife and teenage daughters were waiting back home,
hoping Daddy got Europe and cycling out of his system before his ankles melted.
    Bloated with confit de canard and vin
de pays I lay awake for some time in my room, scanning the whitewashed ceiling
for spiders, while out in the rain woodland creatures did shrill and ghastly
things to one another. It was good to have proper pillows again after eleven nights
spent with my head cricked painfully against the sort of thing you would expect
Gladiators to hit each other with, but I still couldn’t sleep. The day’s
revelations had been almost uniformly troubling. Why had Nick beaten a teenage
Chris Boardman in a 2 5-mile time trial? How had Rhys hauled half a branch of
Millets for 2,500 kilometres on unfused ankles? When would I stop lying?
    I crept back downstairs when everyone
was in bed to call Birna on Nick’s payphone, and drunk and tired it had all
come out in one long blurry sentence. There was an extended pause when I’d
finished, understandable when you’re woken up at midnight to hear your absent
husband mumbling words like ‘pain’, ‘lies’, ‘bonk’ and ‘Fred’. In the end I
carried on myself. ‘I can’t do it I just can’t do this and next it’s Mont
Ventoux where people die and then the Alps and I just can’t I’m just not no I
can’t.’
    It wasn’t a very Eddy Merckx moment.
Birna did all she could in the way of offering soothing platitudes, and when
they elicited only mid-pubescent wordless whines she tried out a
pull-yourself-together verbal cheek-slap. That worked better, but it was still
gone 4 a.m. when I slammed Bernard Hinault’s biography shut, flicked a weary
V-sign at the yellow-jerseyed slaverer on the cover and switched off the light.

Nine

     
    The rain had flattened the long grass
like a stampeding herd of bulls, but the sun was out now and, pouring me the
first of half a dozen glasses of orange juice, Nick suggested the three of us
go for a mountain ride. Because this could not be allowed to happen, I went
back to bed until I heard Rhys and Nick leave, then shambled wanly downstairs
to look at the map. Nick’s proposed circular route up to the col de Saraillé
and back to Biert down the gorge involved a climb to 942 metres up a tiny road
whose impressive collection of double-gradient chevrons guaranteed a rousing
‘sod-that’ verdict. Instead I sat on the patio, reading selections from the
Flanagan cycling library and enjoying the experience of wearing only slightly
foolish clothing during the hours of daylight. The sun made my mottled, waxy
nose throb; under the table, the one-eyed dog leaked sympathetic milk over my
espadrilles. I was ready to go back to