Bette stood and began to clear the things, then took them away to the kitchen. And still Hessel continued.

‘Australia is not a very refined place,’ he said. ‘The culture is a poor copy. It is so thin. It is all the same. It glorifies the stupid. You might be alright though, you are Dutch. You might get a passport. Emigrate to Holland. Marry a Dutch man.’

‘I’m not too interested in any men at the moment, Dutch or otherwise.’

‘Good girl!’ said Hessel, smiling approvingly. ‘A girl shouldn’t have too many boyfriends. Australian girls have too many boyfriends.’ Hessel sat back, as if this settled it.

‘Oh I know,’ I said. ‘I’ve only really had the one, and he was already distracting me too much from my studies. I want a career, you see. Although as far as distracting boyfriends go, Nassim was really nothing to complain about.’

The old man’s face was still. Nassim’s name hung oddly in the air between us. Hessel paused in his monologue long enough to regard me for a moment, to finally notice that I was sitting there, a real flesh and blood person. And at the same time I was suddenly caught up in a complicated tangle of pain and confusion at my own casual mentioning of Nassim. Perhaps Hessel could see it, the wobble it caused me. I hoped not. I didn’t want to talk about it. He blinked at me for a moment but then he went on just as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘One of my girlfriends had a career,’ he said. ‘An “artist”, she called herself, but she was a painter really. She was quite good at it – decorative watercolours, pretty things. But women aren’t really built for careers, you see. Women should only have pastimes.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Elizabeth used to play the piano,’ Hessel spoke over me. ‘That was her pastime. She used to play all the music at the dances.’

He paused for a moment to sip coffee. I sat back, debating whether to try and enlighten my hilarious old Dutch dinosaur grandfather, or to just keep humouring him. It didn’t seem to matter much what I did either way. So I said, ‘Oh poor you, Hessel, no dance partner with your wife stuck at the piano. But I guess it would have been worse if she’d made a career out of it.’ I couldn’t resist that last little poke, but it seemed to pass him by.

‘Oh, ho ho, don’t worry about me,’ he said. ‘I had partners. I had many partners. The women in this town, they are so far away from anything of European culture, they flock to me on the dance floor.’

‘And Grandma was happy about that?’ I asked, a laugh bubbling away in my voice.

Hessel suddenly stood up and pointed a shaking finger at me. I pulled back quickly, surprised by his action. He looked me in the eye as he spoke. ‘You keep asking the wrong questions,’ he said.