The Stronger Sex Read online

  He threw both hands up in the air. “Good heavens, what a sensitive little flower you are! Calm down, do!” He pointed to the chair. “And sit down again!” Seeing that I stayed where I was, he looked up. After a moment’s hesitation he said, “All right, for God’s sake, I apologize! Of course you’re not imagining things! And you’re not out of your mind either!” Another short pause, and he added, “Right, is that enough for you?”

  I sat down again deliberately slowly.

  He let out a sigh as if he’d just been hauling a refractory donkey into its stable, pushed the papers on the table apart and pulled out a folder, stared at it and then looked at me. The red on his forehead and cheeks had turned a little darker. He took another deep breath. “Right, this is what it’s about.” He stared at the folder again and then looked up. “I suppose you know about my business?”

  I hesitated. “Not in detail. I’ve—”

  “What does that mean? Hasn’t that old windbag told you anything except that we used to go hunting together? Or maybe a couple of stories about our skittles club?”

  I said no, of course not, Dr Hochkeppel had said only that he, Klofft, had taken over a small workshop nearly fifty years ago and built it up into a company operating all over the world, with almost a hundred employees, most of whom —

  He waved this aside. “Yes, yes, never mind the soft soap. We don’t have almost a hundred, we have exactly sixty-two permanent employees.” And he held up the folder. “Well, sixty-one now that I’ve chucked that… that lady out.”

  I saw the folder in his hand beginning to tremble, and after a moment’s hesitation he let it drop to the table, put his hand on it and seemed to be pressing his fingers firmly on the cover, as if to stop them shaking. His glance moved away and wandered over the treetops outside, then returned to me.

  “Specialists,” he said. “We’ve specialized, that’s why the business runs so well. And of course we’re better than the competition. Technical measuring devices, control engineering, I don’t know if that means anything to you. Pressure…” He hesitated. His eyes became fixed, then he said abruptly, “Pressure gauge systems. Flow sensors.” He stopped and stared at the folder. After a brief pause he added, “Valves. Klofft’s Valves. We sell them abroad too. Take a look at the brochures; I had them put into this file.”

  He raised his hand, pointed to the folder and immediately put his hand back on it. “And we… and we have sole agency in the German-speaking countries for two leading foreign manufacturers. A British company and a Swedish company.”

  Suddenly he reached for the tumbler, which was half full of water, raised it to his lips and drained it. His hand was shaking; I heard the faint rattle of the glass against his teeth.

  He put the glass down a little too hard, bent to one side and picked up a bottle of mineral water that had been standing beside his chair. Then he hesitated, glancing at the bottle. It looked as if he were wondering whether he could refill the tumbler successfully.

  I put out my hand for the bottle. “May I?” Obviously surprised, he let me take the it. I filled the tumbler, put it on the table and left the bottle beside it.

  He looked at me in silence. Then his gaze wandered out into the garden again. After a while he began to move his lips silently.

  “What department did the lady work in?” I asked.

  He looked at me as if he didn’t understand the question.

  I said, “The lady you… dismissed.”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, of course.” He nodded. “A qualified engineer. Very promising girl. I hired her eleven years ago. She had… she’d just taken her diploma.” He smiled. “She still had long hair then. A mane of it, right down to her bum… Like that weather girl on TV. Really very beautiful. Or shall we say… well, never mind that!” He laughed. “Of course I didn’t hire her for her mane of hair.”

  He thought of reaching for the glass, interrupted his movement, put his hand back on the folder. For a while he said nothing but just looked into space. Then he rubbed his forehead and suddenly looked up. “Yes, well. I’d put an ad in Der Ingenieur. Over the first three days I had three dozen or so applications… three dozen or thereabouts. All men. She was the only woman, but she had the best exam results.” He laughed.

  It took quite a long time. In the end, after several odd digressions and pauses in which he simply said nothing, I had at least a rough idea of the story of the legal dispute in which I was to represent him before the tribunal.

  He had fired the deputy head of his production department, Katharina Fuchs, a qualified engineer, aged thirty-four and unmarried, without notice. She had done impeccable, even outstandingly good work for him for ten years, he said, and then matters had changed. She had repeatedly been late for work, he said, she had taken to leaving her desk for an hour or two in the middle of the day, or went home before the office closed at five. In general she had made it obvious, he claimed, that in contrast to the last ten years she was no longer particularly interested in her job, and considered the work more of a tedious necessity.

  He had no alternative but to warn her, he said. Her conduct did improve then, but it didn’t last long. Two weeks ago, in the middle of the month or around then, anyway on a Wednesday, but I would find all that in the file, well, that Wednesday she had gone to see Herr Pauly, his business manager, and said she had to take the following week off. For urgent private reasons. The whole week.

  Pauly had asked what those reasons were. At that, apparently, she had turned awkward, asking if he hadn’t heard her say they were private, wasn’t that enough? No, Pauly had replied, it wasn’t enough, so he couldn’t decide whether or not she could take the week off himself, she would have to ask the boss in person.

  Next morning she had turned up here and told him the same story, she wanted time off for private reasons, and like Pauly he had asked what did she mean, private reasons, he needed to know in a little more detail. Thereupon she had said insolently no, he definitely did not need to know in more detail, private reasons meant private reasons, they were nothing to do with anyone but her. And then…

  Here he suddenly fell silent, looked out at the garden again and suddenly began nodding his head.

  After a while I said, “And then you refused to give her time off?”

  “Yes, of course,” he said, without looking at me.

  “You refused to give her time off because she didn’t want to tell you what her private reasons were?” I asked.

  He turned back to me and smiled. “Of course not.” Another glance out into the garden, and then he said, “I informed her that the next week, I mean the week she wanted to take off, I was expecting a very large order. From a very interesting foreign customer. And that I wasn’t sure of the conditions yet, but I expected to have to deliver very quickly, so we’d need all hands on deck. And so I told her I was afraid she’d have to postpone her holiday.”

  After a ponderous nod, he added that the lady… that apparently that woman wouldn’t see reason. She had actually objected that Herr Pauly hadn’t said a word to her about any such order. To which he had replied that indeed Herr Pauly couldn’t have said a word about it; he didn’t know about the order yet. He himself, Klofft, had had the final discussion with the customer only that morning, and hadn’t had time to tell Pauly because, instead of dealing with the really important and necessary business in hand, he was obliged at that very moment to argue with her about her unreasonable wish to take time off.

  Yes, well, that was it. She had marched out in a towering fury.

  He fell silent, and then began moving his lips as if gnawing something with his front teeth.

  “But that wasn’t the end of the story,” I said.

  “No, it was not the end of the story. God knows it wasn’t.” He pulled the folder toward him, opened it as if to find something but didn’t even look at the contents. “After that, I mean after that conversation I’d had with her, she went back to the works office and got on with her work as if nothing had happened. She
didn’t say another word about time off. Not to Pauly either. And not on the Friday, which was the next day.”

  He closed the folder and began nodding again, stopped after a while and said, “But then, on the Saturday!”

  Nodding, he said that on the Saturday after his conversation with her, she had dropped her bombshell. In a very underhand way. And as I would see from what followed, she had staged the whole thing, cool as a cucumber: Pauly, as was his habit, had gone to the works on the Saturday morning, which he really had off, to get a few things done. Before he went home at midday he had looked in the letterbox at the entrance of the works building, so as to keep everything in order. And there he had found a letter, obviously delivered by hand and not by the postman – at least, it had no stamp and no postmark on it.

  “Yes.” He leaned forward. “And the lady said in that letter, right out of the blue, that she was off work sick.” She had written claiming to have lumbar vertebral syndrome or LVS. “In the old days you called it plain lumbago. And you went to bed with a hot-water bottle or a heating pad and you got up and went back to work next day.” But not that lady, oh no! She had enclosed a medical certificate. And the doctor who drew it up and was her GP, as he happened to know, obviously had no scruples about saying she would have to be off work for the whole of the coming week. “The whole week! Notice anything about that?”

  I asked what he meant. He meant, he replied as the red flush on his face grew conspicuously darker, he meant that the lady was going to be off work sick for the very week she had wanted to go on holiday. And if I thought by any chance – as he would point out in case I still didn’t see anything odd about the coincidence – if I thought by any chance that she had spent that week in bed at home, I was mightily mistaken.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Why? Why?” he stared at me. “Because she didn’t take her sweet little arse, her poor dislocated behind to bed, she flew to Switzerland! To Geneva, and not economy class, you could bet. A fellow with a BMW 6 coupé met her at the airport. And the pair of them went together to a luxury hotel in the Vaud near Lake Geneva. Five stars, no less, or she’d never have gone there! I mean, you’d need a bit of luxury to make up for being so sick!”

  With an abrupt movement he reached for the tumbler. A few drops of water slopped out as he raised it to his mouth. He leaned forward, lips snapping as they searched for the rim of the glass, drank half the contents with loud gulps, put it down rather too hard. Still leaning forward, he studied the drops of water he had scattered. Then he took out a handkerchief, mopped them off the table, mopped his shirt, wiped the table again and put the handkerchief away.

  I said, “And then you fired Frau Fuchs without notice.”

  “Well, what else?” He looked at me. “I took the liberty of doing that as soon as I found out where the lady was nursing her poor back. You want to know where? In the Beauté du Lac, that’s what they call the place!” His mouth twisted into a nasty grin. “That’s to say, before the letter firing her went out, of course I informed myself of the correct procedure. But then the letter went to her as quickly as possible. It was put through her letterbox at home on the Friday. By a messenger who had a witness with him.”

  “Where did you inform yourself of the correct procedure?”

  He pointed to the books. “In the statutes, where else? I wrote to her saying that… that she…”

  For a moment his glance wandered back and forth, he put his hand out to the folder as if to turn to it for advice, then withdrew it again and said quickly, “…saying that she had obviously obtained a medical certificate by devious means! Yes. Of course!” He leaned back, laughing. “I mean, if she wants to deny that, she can always say her GP offered to give it to her of his own free will although she wasn’t sick at all. Or he did her a favour because she promised him something nice. And I assume she won’t want to proclaim that from the house tops! Or do you see the situation differently, Mr Lawyer?”

  He laughed and then leaned forward. “And secondly, I wrote saying that she took time off on her own initiative after she had been told it would not be allowed! And that she had thus provided two substantial reasons, and two are needed for dismissal without notice.”

  He looked at me in silence, smiling, obviously pleased with himself.

  I asked, “Did you listen to what your works committee had to say?”

  He looked at me. “Do you think I’m lacking in the brains department? Of course I listened to what they had to say.” He gave another of those unpleasant grins. “And guess what, they agreed.”

  I nodded. Then I asked, “You hadn’t cautioned Frau Fuchs first?”

  “No.” He raised his eyebrows. “In this case that wasn’t necessary, as I am sure you know!”

  “No, I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know.”

  He gave me a venomous look, sat up in his armchair and said, “A caution is not essential in the case of particularly severe dereliction of duty on the part of an employee!” He pointed to his papers. “Want me to look up the legal ruling?”

  “No, thank you, that won’t be necessary. You see… the question is whether the judge we get in a hearing before the industrial tribunal will think what Frau Fuchs did a particularly severe dereliction of duty.”

  He stared at me. “There can hardly be any question of that!”

  “I’m not so sure.” I smiled at him. “Give me a little time to study this case. But also I’d like to know how Frau Fuchs reacted to being fired. I suppose she’s back from her trip to Switzerland?”

  “That added insult to injury!” He shook his head vigorously, then suddenly stopped. I saw perspiration breaking out on his forehead within seconds. He fished the handkerchief out of his pocket, rubbed his now deep-red cheeks and brow, but a little later his skin was glistening with sweat again.

  He said, “She got back last Sunday. And she turned up at the works on Monday saying she was better. And then she made a terrible scene to Pauly because… because of being fired. Typical of the woman! Pauly had to throw her out. More or less.” He took a deep breath.

  I nodded. I hesitated for a moment and then asked, “Are you all right? Or should we take a break?”

  He drew his eyebrows together. “What’s that supposed to mean? I’m OK. Go on, go on!” And he quickly passed his handkerchief over his forehead again.

  After a little while I asked, “And she told your manager she was going to take legal action against you for wrongful dismissal?”

  “Of course she did!” He laughed. “I’d have been very surprised if she hadn’t threatened us with that on the spot!”

  I nodded, and then fell silent. I was going through his account of the incident again in my mind. He watched me, clearly suspicious.

  In the end I said, “How do you know, by the way, that Frau Fuchs went to Switzerland?”

  He smiled. “On that Saturday a week ago, when Pauly found her medical certificate in the letterbox, I hired a detective then and there.”

  “A detective?”

  “Why, yes! Anyone wanting to go one better than that woman has to think of something good!” He laughed. “Pauly told me at midday, and I hired the detective. He took up his position outside her apartment on the Saturday afternoon. He had another man take over for the night and then followed her on the Sunday morning. When she went to the airport, understand? He called me from there and told me she was flying to Geneva, and I told him to get on the same plane.” He laughed. “Next morning, when it was obvious that she was going to stay until the next Sunday, he came back.”

  I nodded.

  He said, “Any more questions?”

  I thought for a moment and then said, “Yes, one more.”

  “And that is?”

  I said, “Did you have to get a stand-in for Frau Fuchs? To deal with that large order?”

  He threw his head back as if remembering something unwelcome. “Ah, the order, yes.” He looked at me and shook his head. “I’m sorry to say I didn’t get it. A competi
tor snapped it up from under my nose at the last minute. Offered the customer a rock-bottom price. These things happen in business today.” He shook his head. “But I won’t go along with that kind of approach, not me!”

  I sat there for a little longer and then got to my feet.

  He looked at me keenly. “That’s it?”

  “Yes.” After a pause I said, “Unless you have anything else to tell me?”

  He shook his head. “Not that I know of.”

  I picked up my briefcase. “Please let me know as soon as you hear from the tribunal.”

  “Yes, of course. I’ll do that.”

  I indicated the file folder. “Is that for me?”

  “Yes, sure.” He picked it up, held it in mid-air and looked at me. “And… how will the hearing go?”

  I said, “I don’t know.” After a pause, in which he stared at me with obviously increasing resentment, I said, “I’m not sure that we shall win.”

  “What?” He glared at me. “Then can you tell me why you’ve been hanging around here so long?”

  Before I could answer that, he threw the folder down on the table in front of me. “Oh, devil take it! Here, take the thing and have fun with it!”

  3

  As I went down the stairs the bell rang in the hall again, twice. Cilly Klofft came into the living room and toward me. She said she hoped I could stay a little longer; would I please wait for her? She wouldn’t be long, she added. I stood aside on the stairs to let her go by.

  As she passed me I caught the scent of her perfume again.

  Before I went into the living room, I suddenly heard a distant voice from above, Klofft’s voice. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but he seemed to be raising his voice and speaking abusively. Then I heard a door latch. I quickly went into the living room and sat down in the same chair as before.

  Cilly Klofft was smiling as she came in. She asked if I’d like a glass of fruit juice now, and I said yes, although time was getting on. She poured the fruit juice from a crystal carafe, brought it to me and sat down opposite me, crossing her legs. I drank and put the glass down. When I looked back at her, I saw that she was still smiling. The little lines on her face showed a little more distinctly.