The bull was in a hurry, already clambering on the back of the cow, his hooves scoring her hide. Suzie hung back, wanting to leave, but Sabine had clambered onto the fence, hanging over the top rail, and she returned reluctantly to join her. She saw with amazement that the bull’s penis had emerged; its long creamy oval testicles jerked. The cow swung round, so that the bull slid off his target. Micheline and Marie-Jeanne were calling to one another in patois, trying to back the cow onto the bull. She was turning her head seductively to look over her shoulder, while sidling away from him around the pen, swishing her tail from side to side. The bull made a second attempt, which she sidestepped neatly, and again his front hooves came crashing to the ground.

Suzie’s ears were full of the roar of breathing: the snorting of the bull, the nervous huffing of the cow, Micheline’s exasperated intake of air as the cow evaded her outspread arms once again, and the excited, rapid breathing of Sabine beside her, leaning eagerly forward to watch.

Micheline and Marie-Jeanne exchanged instructions and set about forcing the cow back, holding her still to allow the bull to mount her. This time they were successful in synchronising their actions. The cow retreated in front of Micheline’s advance. Marie-Jeanne seized the cow’s tail and pulled it over her back. At the same time, when the bull reared up, its pizzle extending to an astonishing length and rigidity, the child took hold of the penis and guided it to its goal. Then she ducked out from beneath the momentarily united bodies and, seconds later, the bull had disconnected. The cow, as if nothing had happened, moved away, lowering her head to tug at the grass.

In the few seconds that the conjunction lasted, Suzie heard Sabine speak. ‘That’s what they’re doing. I know it.’

Later they sat on the low chairs in the chapel, out of range of Micheline and Florence who might require them for chores.

‘You can’t believe that she’s working for the Germans,’ Suzie protested. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

‘She could work for both sides,’ Sabine argued. ‘Just because she goes to a Fourteenth of July parade doesn’t mean she isn’t also betraying them to the major.’

‘She might tell him things to mislead him,’ Suzie suggested.

‘She might,’ Sabine conceded. ‘But it hasn’t anything to do with that. It’s just sex, like the cow and the bull.’

‘It’s obvious she’s afraid. How can you think it is sex?’ Sabine crossed her arms and drew her hands down her torso. ‘I just know. You can’t yet.’

It was true, Suzie thought; two fleshy cones, small but distinct and separate, were visible under Sabine’s dress. Suzie’s own chest was a flat as a child’s, the nipples the palest lilac blemishes on her white skin. She frowned. She could not understand how developing a bust would help you to see something that wasn’t there.