Chapter 7
— A Paper Signed in a Sickroom
Years ago, I fell ill. It was not a sudden illness, but a slow one, a fever that would not leave me, and a weakness that kept me in bed for weeks, and finally a stay in hospital in Vienna, where the doctors spoke in low voices and the nurses moved quietly around my bed. I was sixty-five then, and I had never been seriously ill before, and I did not like it. I did not like the tubes, or the machines, or the way the light came through the blinds in thin strips, or the way I could not get up and walk to my office and check the accounts. I wanted to be back on the river. I wanted to be back at work. And I was afraid, for the first time in my life, that I might not get better.
Landon came to see me every day, and he was kind, and he was attentive, and he brought flowers, and he sat beside my bed and told me not to worry about the company, that he would look after everything while I recovered. I believed him. I had no reason not to believe him. He was my son, and he was trying to be helpful, and I was tired and frightened, and I wanted to believe that the company was safe in his hands. One afternoon, he brought a paper with him, and he said the hospital needed it, so that someone could make medical decisions for me if I became too ill to decide for myself. He said it was a simple form, a standard form, and that it would only cover medical matters.
I remember the paper clearly, because I read it before I signed it, even though my eyes were tired and my hand shook. It was a limited power of attorney, and it said, in plain words, that Landon could make medical decisions on my behalf while I was ill. It did not say he could sell anything. It did not say he could sign contracts. It did not say he could touch the company's money, or its boats, or its property. It said medical decisions only, and I signed it because I trusted him, and because I wanted someone I loved to be able to speak for me if I could not speak for myself. I signed it in a sickroom, in a hospital bed, with a nurse as witness, and I thought nothing more of it.
I recovered, slowly, and I went home, and I went back to work, and I forgot about the paper. It was filed away somewhere, and I did not think about it again for years. I did not know that Landon had kept a copy, and that he had kept it for a purpose I would never have imagined. I did not know that a paper signed in a sickroom, for medical decisions only, could be turned into a weapon against the company I had built with Nelson. I learned that later, when I began to look at the accounts, and when I began to ask questions about boats that were no longer in our fleet.
The Wachau Queen and the Vienna Star were two of our oldest and most beloved boats, historic vessels that had carried passengers on the Danube for decades. They were part of the company's history, and part of its heart, and they were worth a great deal of money, not only for their age, but for their condition, and for the passengers who loved them. One day, I noticed they were no longer listed in our fleet, and when I asked about them, I was told they had been sold. Sold, I was told, by Landon, using the power of attorney I had signed in hospital. He had used a paper meant for medical decisions to authorise the sale of two historic boats, as if a sickroom signature gave him the right to sell the fleet.
The buyer was Fenella Waverly, a rival operator who had wanted our historic boats for years. She bought them for a fraction of their true value, a price so low that it could not have been an honest sale. I do not know, even now, whether she knew the paper was limited, or whether she believed Landon when he told her he had the authority to sell. I know only that the boats left Vienna, and that the money paid for them was a small sum, and that the sale was wrong from beginning to end. The partnership agreement Nelson and I had written said the fleet could not be sold without both founders' signatures. My signature on a medical paper was not a founder's signature for a sale. It was never meant to be.
When I discovered the sale, I felt a coldness that was worse than the river. I had signed that paper in trust, in illness, in love for my son, and he had used it to take two boats that belonged to the company, and to the river, and to the people who had sailed on them for sixty years. I kept the knowledge close, as I kept the invoices close, because I knew that if I accused him without proof, he would say I had forgotten what I had signed, or that I had misunderstood, or that my illness had muddled my memory. But I had not forgotten. I remembered the paper. I remembered its words. Medical decisions only. And I knew that somewhere, in the locked cabinet in the archive, the original paper still waited, ready to speak for itself.