The hop garden at this time of year is like a heavily pregnant woman, blooming with life but also terribly tired, ready to relieve herself of her burden. Soon the huts will fill with poor folk from London and Kent, ready to work through the deep golden days of September and on into October, pulling the hops down from up high and carrying them over to the oast house for drying. Henry Lodge sees this coming birth but cannot settle upon it. Indeed, he has not been able to settle since returning from Deal in April. His skittishness has not yet quite affected the business of his hop plantation – his diligent manager, though alarmed by his master’s sudden lack of application on horticultural matters, is by no means obstructed by it. The hop garden can run itself. Such is the achievement of this man of means. If he had a wife, she might have gently suggested some time ago, perhaps over dinner one fine evening as the sun set over the oast house and the hops quivered on their poles, that the pattern of his interests has become obsessive, that it is one thing to pore over the Lloyd’s Register of Shipping with the same avidity as his fellow gentlemen farmers pore over livestock prices, it is quite another to take his rickety old carriage to Deal just to take a look at a ship.
