AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter Twelve
Hal
I don’t have to wait long for Morris and Sweeny to fold. A large, sealed envelope is waiting for me at the hotel after dinner with the proposed sale agreement inside.
They have agreed to my price, no surprises there. In my experience, if you make people believe that you are not prepared to negotiate, they will generally agree to your price. It’s a game I’ve watched my colleagues play too many times. The fact Morris and Sweeny – and I’ve started calling them M and S – don’t seem to know this game tells me they’re not the power enterprise they pretend to be.
None of it really matters; soon this will all be off my hands. There’s just one last condition. It occurred to me after George talked about the history of our family. Surely, it must be wrong to close the book on the Hemingways as if they never existed. So, whatever M and S build on our land must be named after us – Hemingway house, Hemingway Court, Hemingway Holiday Homes, whatever. It’s a small gesture, for my father’s sake.
I email them with final terms and go to sleep for the last time on La Canette.
They agree to the name. In fact, everything seems to go very smoothly, very quickly. We meet in the hotel’s lounge the next morning and complete the sale. A splinter of regret stabs inside my chest as I hold my pen above the first dotted line. An image of my father, alone with his stubborn pride, refusing to give up the big house he inherited from his father and grandfather and great, great, great grandfather before that. Am Ireallyabout to sign away threehundred years of the Hemingways on La Canette?
“Everything okay?” Sweeny hovers too close. Someone should teach him that acting so anxious is likely to put his clients off. Doesn’t he know anything?
“Fine.”
I scrawl my signature across the line.Harrison Hemingway, black ink on white paper. It looks like a betrayal.
“And here.” Sweeny turns the page and puts a little cross next to another dotted line.
Part of me wants to slow this down, to let the realisation filter through, but I ignore it and sign my name again more firmly. And a last signature on the third page.
“Congratulations,” Morris says, looking relieved. “We just need to walk across the village square to the Municipalité and have it ratified by the land registry. Once the sale is registered, we can transfer the payment to your account.”
“You got a sweet deal here.” Sweeny’s barely hidden resentment makes his tone acrid like burned rubber. “Count yourself lucky.”
“Fine, let’s go.” I make myself get up and march out as purposefully as possible. This is what I wanted. The clean break my mother wished for. Her retirement is now secure. We'll also have a safety net in case my sister ever needs help. And finally, my financial freedom. With my duty to my family complete, I won’t have to prioritise salary over job satisfaction anymore. Watching Morris and Sweeny operate reminds me of everything I hate about this industry; and the thought of writing my resignation letter makes me smile.
While the land-registry officer reads the contract, his hand is on the rubber stamp. I think about jobs in green urban development or sustainable architecture.
The officer searches for something on his computer; taps a few entries almost absentmindedly. It all looks like routine until his hand pauses on the mouse. “Just a moment.” He stares at the screen, and a puzzled frown deepens between his eyebrows.
He beckons to a colleague at another desk.
The man comes over to check, and they exchange looks.
“One of the old leases,” the colleague confirms with a nod at the computer, then looks at me. “I guess it was never changed.”
“That can’t be right.” Sweeny leans forward in his seat. “Myles de la Cour, is it? Can you double check?”
Myles, still standing behind the computer, gives Sweeny a very cold look. “We have.”
Unfazed, Sweeny persists. “Weren’t all the leases supposed to be changed by now?”
“Not all.” Myles glances towards me then away. “He can’t sell.”
It makes no sense, and I’m about to laugh out loud. Of course, I can sell.
But Morris and Sweeny must know something I don’t because they get up and shove their papers into their briefcases. They don’t even argue, Sweeny grumbles to no one as he heads for the door, “Things were a lot better before George took over.” He pushes it open with his foot as if kicking a rubbish bin. “When old Lord M was Seigneur, things ran properly.”
Morris follows Sweeny; the door swings shut behind them, and they’re gone. They don’t even look at me. I’m as much use to them as last year’s calendar.
“Would someone care to explain this to me?” I demand of the two officials. “I am, after all the owner.”
Myles meets my eyes this time, and he doesn’t like me. It’s clear in his cold politeness, and in the way he makes me wait until he walks back to his desk. “Your house is still under the old tenancy rules, which means you are tenants not leaseholders. The property belongs to the seigneur not to you. You cannot sell it, I’m afraid.”
“But it all changed, we are now leaseholders.” I remember reading about this some time ago, it was in all the papers about the reformation of La Canettes’ feudal system.
