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trail that will be obliterated behind us as we go,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that right, Kiki, you whiskered tiger, fierce gatekeeper of my heart?’
    Turtle Derby
    The tom woke me early this morning, quoting Colette. ‘The cat is the animal to whom the Creator gave the biggest eye, the softest fur, the most supremely delicate nostrils, a mobile ear, an unrivalled paw and a curved claw borrowed from the rose-tree,’ he said.
    â€˜I’m sleeping,’ I said.
    â€˜Did you know,’ he continued, ‘that the Persians used to let cats loose on the battlefield when they were at war with the Egyptians? Since the Egyptians worshipped us, they’d always surrender rather than hurt the cats.’
    I hissed at him and his anecdotal tinsel, wanting him to go away. No more silly little diversions, no more make-believe that I am still stretching out at my leisure on Colette’s divan, no more creature comforts. We are at war now, all of us.
    â€˜I have news,’ he said. ‘I heard the soldiers talking about the sentry dog this morning. He made it safely hundreds of miles home. And when his master – who is apparently very loyal to the war effort – reported his return, the commander-in-chief not only awarded the dog a medal but gave him an honourable discharge from service!’
    I felt terribly jealous of the dog all of a sudden, reunited with his master and his sheep.
    The tom seemed to sense this. He changed tack. ‘Do you like Colette’s baby girl, Bel-Gazou?’ he asked.
    â€˜What self-respecting cat likes a human baby!’ I exclaimed.
    â€˜Is she a good mother?’
    I hesitated. She is ambivalent about the role and has been from the start. She mused to me one summer evening, as we sat on the balcony and looked out across the pastel rooftops of Paris, ‘How can I ever be a mother who happens to have written a book? I will always be, at heart, a writer who happens to have birthed a child.’ I said nothing to the tom, not wanting to betray her secret: that she loves me more than she will ever love Bel-Gazou. I do not demand as much of her, and Colette, like all writers, is selfish with her time.
    â€˜I shouldn’t have asked,’ the tomcat said. ‘I’ll leave you alone.’
    I thought for a long time about the dog’s journey home, trying to imagine each stage of it, and wished I were a dog so that I could survive the same journey back to her in Paris, even if she no longer wants me, even if she has become serious in my absence, along with all those who have glimpsed the godforsaken future.
    Eventually I went to find the tomcat in his trench. He made room for me next to him. We watched the soldiers bet on which mud turtle would win the slow-motion race they had been started on, from one side of the trench wall to the other. Three small turtles were plodding forward along the racing lanes the soldiers had created for them. A fourth was marching around and around in a determined circle, wearing a deep groove in the mud. And a fifth had somehow hoisted another turtle onto its back, and was winning the race.
    Its preternatural strength reminded me of another trivial scene from years ago, before Colette’s improving literary reputation allowed her to shift from music hall to theatre stage. She would take me with her to the Olympia or the Wagram Empire, or wherever she happened to be performing that season. I would lie across a spotlight in the wings until it became unbearably hot, watching each act from the darkness. One night I watched a sixteen-year-old girl, whose stage name was Jawbone, lift between her teeth a kitchen table with an enormously fat woman sitting on it.
    The boredom on the faces of the soldiers betting on the trench turtle derby dissipated, to be replaced with alarm. They scattered, standing to attention.A shadow was thrown over me and the tomcat. Somebody was standing in our sun at the entrance to the trench. I