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plate he had slowly and methodically devoured his ham. The fact did not in the least surprise her. She was aware of her grandfather’s penchant for ham, which he always ate with a liberal serve of hot mustard.
    Bartholomew nodded, and she served him another slice from the nearby dish. Christmas luncheon was always a relaxed affair. After the guests had been individually served, fresh platters of meat were carved and set out on the table in order for them to help themselves.
    Kate placed the pot of hot mustard in front of her grandfather and as their eyes met he smiled. His smile was lop-sided, his lower lip a little slack as a result of the stroke, but his eyes were beautiful. Kate loved her grandfather’s eyes. A soft, gentle brown in a once-handsome face, they were intelligent, communicative. Bartholomew spoke with his eyes. At least he did to Kate.
    She removed the lid of the mustard pot and watched the laborious care with which he served himself. His dexterity reduced as it was, Bartholomew went to great pains to avoid being clumsy, careful never to spill or to drop things. It’s like watching a film in slow motion, Kate thought, but she knew better than to offer any help.
    Kate shared a special relationship with her grandfather, particularly since his stroke. She knew that he appreciated her practicality and that he abhorred both pity and sentimentalism. She sensed that he found her mother’s tragic assessment of him galling, and she was quite right, he did. Bartholomew was a modest man. He always had been. Unlike his son Stanley, he did not see himself as ‘larger than life’ and had no desire to be the centre of attention.
    Kate found her grandfather’s situation strangely poignant. His daughter-in-law romanticised him to the point of embarrassment, and his son barely recognised his existence. Even before the stroke, Stan the Man had never seemed to have much time for his father, a fact that had always been a source of puzzlement to Kate. They were men of vastly different temperament, certainly, but given Stan’s demands for respect it seemed odd that he showed so little for his own father. Whenever he spoke of the past and the old days of Elianne, as Stan very often did, it was always his grandfather, Big Jim, who featured, not Bartholomew. And yet both Kate and her brothers had heard from any number of sources that Bartholomew Durham had been a clever businessman, one who really knew the sugar industry. It would appear that Bartholomew, quiet and unassuming as he was, had been overshadowed by Big Jim, even in the eyes of his own son.
    Champagne flutes and beer glasses were clinked and raised throughout lunch as toasts were proposed, first by Stan Durham, then by Neil. They drank to the success of Krantz & Son, and they drank to the Krantz family’s impending move to Bundaberg. They drank to loyalty and friendship, and then, upon Neil’s proposal, they drank to the new mill machinery, which was due for delivery in mid-January. Luigi and Alan exchanged excited glances at this point.
    Finally Ivan decided it was his turn. ‘I wish to propose a toast to Kate,’ he said, rising from his chair.
    Ivan, although second-generation Australian, was of German extraction. His grandfather had arrived in the area in 1890, contracted to work on the construction of the railway bridge that was to be built over the river connecting North Bundaberg to the township. Following the bridge’s completion, however, Gustave Krantz had stayed on. He’d married the daughter of a German timber man, and settled in Bundaberg working for Wyper Brothers, the hardware merchants. His only son had eventually married and moved south, where Ivan had been born.
    Despite the fact that he’d been born, raised and educated in Brisbane, Ivan considered his grandfather’s history qualified him as a local, a view with which the others were in complete accord. Ivan Krantz was a bona fide Bundy boy to the locals, and to those who lived on the estate