Sabine’s interpretation of what was going on was entirely different.

One afternoon they were playing on the shady side of the farmyard, when they had heard German voices at the gates. The soldiers on duty, two of the elderly ones, were confronted by a small girl and a large cow.

‘It’s Marie-Jeanne come for the bull,’ Sabine reported.

The Bonnemort bull had a high reputation locally. Without fail his efforts impregnated the cows offered to him; the calves were invariably healthy, the bulls tender and white-fleshed, the heifers good milkers. For years Henri had allowed the smallholders of the neighbourhood, those who existed with no more than one or two cows to feed their families, to make use of the services of the bull without payment.

Marie-Jeanne was younger than Suzie and Sabine, about nine years old. Her mother and her aunt worked the family farm, with Marie-Jeanne’s help, while her father had been held since the defeat as a prisoner of war, in a camp in Germany. She was standing in front of the sentries, barefoot, a stick in her hand to tap the cow’s bony rump when it lingered too long grazing on the verge. Even though she spoke French, she was explaining her errand to the soldiers in the local patois, as an act of defiance, although even if she had used French, they would have understood her no better. Her voice was becoming increasingly shrill as she repeated her explanation which she reinforced with descriptive gestures that astonished the guards. Finally, she thwacked her cow and the two of them walked in, ignoring attempts to stop them, through the courtyard and into the farmyard.

‘The idiots,’ she commented to Sabine and Suzie, before yelling, ‘Micheline,’ at the top of her lungs.

Micheline emerged from her kitchen and kissed Marie-Jeanne four times, alternating from cheek to cheek. ‘Is it time for that cow of yours again, the most troublesome we ever have?’

‘It’s true,’ Marie-Jeanne agreed with complacency, as if her cow’s reluctance to accept insemination was a confirmation of her refinement and excellence.

‘Henri brought the bull in, but he’s away. He must have forgotten you were coming. Girls, you’ll have to lend us a hand.’

Sabine and Suzie joined Micheline and Marie-Jeanne in driving the cow before them towards the pen in which Henri had put the bull the night before.

He was a fine beast and Suzie, with her anthropomorphic sympathy for the animals of the farm, had always admired him. His hair was a rich caramel colour, as soft as cashmere, like the coat Opa used to wear long ago in Düsseldorf in the wintertime. He had heavy shoulders and short sturdy legs. His head was broad, with creamy curls on his forehead between his widely separated dark eyes, which gave him, for Suzie, an air of wisdom. He looked commanding, paternal, as he stood in the field among his cows and calves, who gave him precedence at the feeding trough.

Now he had lost some of his habitual calm, moving about the pen and bellowing at the sight of the cow. She had become increasingly skittish and at first refused to enter the pen, so that Micheline, Suzie and Sabine had to make a cordon to drive her in to meet the bull. Marie-Jeanne, who had been holding open the wire, promptly closed the picket on her, shutting herself and the cow inside for their encounter. Micheline climbed into the enclosure to join them.