He dipped his pen and began to write.
The invitation came one morning as a blustering southerly rain squall eased. Kydd disliked the rain: it caused runnels of reddish water to cascade into the harbour from a thousand bare surfaces, making roads a squelching trial, and today he was due another wearisome argument with the shipyard.
It was an odd invitation; personally written, it was addressed to a Lieutenant Kydd and signed by a Philip Gidley King. Then it dawned on him. This was a letter from the august person of no less than the governor. Puzzled, he read on. With every amiable solicitude it apologised for the remissness in not earlier inviting a fellow sea officer to his table and hoped to remedy the omission that Friday evening at an informal affair with friends.
"M' dear William, what am I t' make of this?"
Redfern looked up from his journal and took the letter. "Well, now. It does seem as if you have been recognised, old chap. This is Himself, of course, and you must know that, since the First Fleet, every governor has been a naval officer. He must be curious about you, my boy."
"What sort o' man is he, then, as you'd hear it?"
"Sociable and affable—been here right from the start in 'eighty-eight at Botany Bay—and while you've been quilting the French he has done a service for New South Wales, in my opinion. It was in sad dilapidation before. The lobsterbacks held the whole place to ransom by trading in rum and the colony was going to rack and ruin. Now we have brick-built houses and roads, quite an achievement with no resources at hand."
"Aye," murmured Kydd. A useless penal colony at the ends of the earth would be all but forgotten by a country fighting for its life against a despotic revolution.
"And don't forget that as a naval officer he is a rare enough creature, and he faces not a few enemies. The traders are few in number but they want to run the port for their own ends and are wealthy and powerful. And he has the military: the marines were all sent back to the war and we're left with the sottish rogues in the New South Wales Corps. When you add in the big landowners, like MacArthur, who have their own conceiving of how they should be governed, you will know his task is no light one."
"Has he th' bottom f'r a fight?"
Redfern grinned without humour. "I think so, friend. He's the son of a draper born in the wilds of Launceston and knows what it is to stand before gentlemen and prevail." His face clouded. "I honour him most for his fearless support of those who have paid their penalty and want to contribute to their society. There are many—your MacArthur is chief among them—who would deny us the right and take the odious view that, once a criminal, the blood is tainted and we must be deprived for ever of any chance to aspire to higher things."
"Do have some more silver bream, Mr Kydd. You'll find then why it's famed for its succulence," Mrs King said brightly, easing a morsel of fish on to his plate, then motioning to the servant to offer it to the other guests.
It was indeed a fine dish and Kydd did justice to it. "Tell me, Mrs King," he mumbled, "what is th' name o' the sauce? It has a rare taste."
"Ah, that is our Monsieur Mingois having one of his better days. It is his Quin's fish sauce."
King beamed at Kydd. "Rather better than we find on our plate after a week or two at sea, hey?"
"Aye, sir—an' you'll be remembering th' midshipman's burgoo an' hard tack, not t' say other delicacies an enterprising young gentleman c'n find!"
Laughing gustily, King looked fondly at his wife. "L'tenant, not so free, if you please, with your sea tales in front of Anna." She dimpled and stifled a giggle.
Picking up his glass, Kydd enquired politely, "The French still in harbour, sir, is it resolved as t' who may name th' new-found territories? Commander Flinders or . . . ?"
"Why, we, of course," King answered smugly. "Flinders was there before them. For all their 'Napoleon Strait,' 'Josephine Bight' and such, they were pipped. We have sea charts of our south such as would make you stare, sir."
"Mr Kydd," broke in Mrs King, "were you indeed an officer at the glorious Nile with Admiral Nelson? I've only just heard."
"Why, er, yes, Mrs King," Kydd said. Now he understood: it had only just been discovered that he was a hero of the Nile, which placed him at a social pinnacle in this faraway outpost and had earned him the good-natured envy and curiosity of the governor, himself a naval officer and far from the excitement and honours of active service.
"Goodness, how exciting! We shall have a soirée and all my friends will come to hear Lieutenant Kydd speak of his adventures. Such an honour to have you, Mr Kydd, believe me."
"I'd be interested m'self, if I'm to be invited," the governor said stiffly, but with a friendly gesture leaned over to top up Kydd's glass. "Should you have been received by the first governor, your invitation to Government House would say, at the close, 'Guests will be expected to bring their own bread.'"
He waited for the dutiful merriment to subside and went on, "But as you might remark it, we have advanced a trifle since then. We are all but self-sufficient in basic foodstuffs and I have my hopes for a form of staple that may be exported. Coal, sir. We have made substantial finds on the banks of the Hunter River, and by this we may at last be able to expect a net inflow of specie and thus pay for our imports. And put a stop to this barbarous practice of payments in rum."
The obvious sincerity in his enthusiasm for the enterprise touched Kydd. "Sir, th' fine stone buildings I see on every hand are a great credit t' your colony. Y' have faith in its future, an' I hope t' make my return one day to see it."
"Thank you, Mr Kydd. I have my faith also—but it shall be so only because the inhabitants themselves will it so. Sir, to be frank, there are those who would see a land with two peoples, the free settlers and the emancipated. They see the one in permanent subjugation to the other. I am not of that kind. I believe that if a convict is offered hope and rehabilitation and accepts, then he is redeemed and may take his place in our society. I will not have it that there are two races apart in the same land."
"Hear, hear!" A strong-featured man further down the table raised his glass to the governor. Others murmured approbation.
"I dream that this settlement shall mightily increase, shall prosper by the labours and blood of both bound and free and, with our staple now secured and a mighty port at our feet, within a lifetime we shall be a great and wonderous people upon the land."
A burst of applause broke out. Kydd watched the faces: hard, sun-touched and lean. Some of these were probably the "emancipated" of whom King had spoken, and each had a sturdy, unaffected air of resolution that made the governor's dream seem so very possible.
"Do tip us the poem of Sydney Cove, Jonathan, if you will," King directed at the strong-featured man. Then he turned to Kydd and said, "Penned by Erasmus Darwin at our establishing and only now proving true—except for the bit about the fantastical bridge across the harbour, that is."
There, rayed from cities o'er the cultured land,
Shall bright canals and solid roads expand.
There the proud arch, Colossus-like, bestride
Yon glittering streams, and bound the chafing tide;
Embellished villas crown the landscape scene
Farms wave with gold, and orchards blush between.
It was met with proud cries and hearty table thumps. A realisation dawned on Kydd: beyond the tawdry and makeshift of the raw settlement, beyond the flogging triangles and penal apparatus, there were those who were going to bring a new country to life by their own efforts and vision.