Michela Wrong - Borderlines

‘It isn’t mandatory.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You look like someone trapped in Purgatory. Boredom and frustration aren’t obligatory. You could try something more stimulating.’

For a moment I thought he might be a Jehovah’s Witness and I was about to get the ‘Have you been saved?’ routine. My face assumed a rictus of polite refusal and I raised a palm in an instinctive fending-off motion.

He blinked those long lashes a couple of times, then gave me a shy smile of enormous sweetness. ‘You’re the British lawyer, aren’t you? Part of the Grobart & Fitchum crew?’

I nodded warily.

‘Paula? I noticed you all earlier in the lobby. I’m Winston Peabody. Dan and I go way back. We both did time at the Justice Department.’ We shook hands and he nodded at a signboard in the lobby. ‘I’m here for the seminar on my favourite topic, corporate sleaze. But I’ll also be giving a speech for the human-rights crowd. Can I tempt you? It’ll make a change from your usual fare. And sometimes I have work for people like you.’

‘People like me?’

He pursed his lips and gazed at me speculatively, like a tailor measuring his client for a suit. ‘Oh, people with that questing look in their eyes. The Unrooted, I call them. Take it as a compliment. Complacency’s not exactly attractive. Anyway, come along. I’m trying to rustle up an audience. Nothing more embarrassing than talking to an empty room.’ He scribbled the venue and time on the back of a business card, placed it on my table and walked off.

That last bit was one of his little jokes, of course. Winston Peabody III, the first black partner at the Washington firm of Melville & Bart and a celebrity on the human-rights circuit, did not need to beg strangers in hotels to attend his talks. When seats ran out, people would stand. He was one of those speakers adored by the media and envied by academics, who could popularise without dumbing down, rendering dry specialisms so accessible that listeners who had never dreamed of opening a law book found themselves wondering whether they had missed their calling. There are men who seem to change shape, to grow in stature when they climb onto a public platform. Behind a desk, over the phone, Winston was always formidable. On a podium or presenting in court, he became positively sexy, acquiring a town-hall charisma, the spiky, sardonic edge and instinctive timing of the stand-up comedian who knows how to play an audience. Had he wished to at that moment, he could have tapped almost any woman – and a fair number of the men – on the shoulder and they would have considered fucking him a privilege. But in the seconds it took him to step off the stage, he visibly shrank, folding, like an empty Coke can in a weightlifter’s fist, to become just a small, slightly paunchy man in a creased yellow suit whose salt-and-pepper halo of hair could not conceal advanced male-pattern baldness and a tendency to dandruff. Incredible Hulk to mild-mannered Bruce Banner in the blink of an eye.

I honestly can’t remember the details of Winston’s speech, hosted by a human-rights group that had hired a hall on Harvard’s campus for the purpose. Sheer exhaustion had brought matters to a head on the Swiss deal. My skills were not required for the final session with Zurich, and I found myself with a free afternoon. He must have spoken about the hunger for justice in societies emerging from war, how ending the climate of impunity held the key to peace. He probably talked about the debt the West owed developing countries for the horrors of slavery and colonialism and the cynicism of the Cold War. I do recall that he gave some gory examples, anecdotes from visits to East Timor and Cambodia, work done in Colombia and Sierra Leone. Members of the audience gasped at references to stairwells daubed with blood, defence attorneys disembowelled in their offices, human-rights campaigners pulled over on remote country roads and beheaded in the spotlights of their killers’ cars. I saw one girl, long brown hair falling to her waist, close her eyes and lean her head on the shoulder of her boyfriend, who put his arm round her in a manly gesture that signalled: it’s OK, I’m here. What impressed me, though, was not the heartrending stuff, or that Winston spoke in meticulously punctuated sentences – you could actually hear the semi-colons, dashes and quotation marks and when he told his audience: ‘I’ll come back to that point later,’ it wasn’t just a phrase, he really did return, topping and tailing his thought processes like a chef preparing green beans – no, it was the surgical coolness of his eye. This was an impassioned, angry man, but one who never allowed his emotions to interrupt a methodical taking of notes. On his deathbed, as his nearest and dearest gathered to weep, Winston Peabody would be calling, ‘Hush’, the better to analyse the timbre, tone and length of his own death rattle.

At the end, I dutifully took my place in the throng of acolytes gathering around him. Don’t ask me why. I think I wanted him to know I’d bothered. Waiting, I registered that I was a good decade older than the rest.

‘Mr Peabody, I just feel, like, what’s happening is just so awful. What can I do ?’ twittered a pigtailed blonde, her cheeks flushed with emotion. She was almost pogoing with enthusiasm, flashing glimpses of a toned stomach and pierced navel. I spotted the gleam of metal in her mouth. Dear God, she was actually wearing braces. This was not the place for me. I turned to leave, but at that moment Winston caught my eye. He reached forward, the human Red Sea somehow parted before him, and placed a restraining hand on my sleeve. ‘Please. Don’t go.’

Fifteen minutes later, the flock of groupies had dispersed and we were in the campus canteen drinking coffee.

He spoke as though picking up an interrupted conversation. ‘So, since 1997 I’ve been working pro bono for the government of North Darrar, in the Horn of Africa. I don’t expect you’ve heard of it?’

‘Well, actually …’

His eyebrows shot up in query.

‘I’ve heard of Darrar, that’s all.’

‘That’s more than most people can say. Good. In many ways North Darrar encapsulates the problems faced by traumatised post-conflict nations. A breakaway state that has just come through the second of two wars with its neighbour and former occupier, and finds itself having to negotiate its border – prove the country’s right to exist, in essence – in The Hague. They’re trying to build a democracy from scratch, but their best people were either killed or fled into exile during the independence struggle so the last thing they need is this kind of international court case. They weren’t rich to start off with – the last war bankrupted them and there’s only so much you can make exporting badly cured hides and potash to the Middle East – and the other side hires the best.’

‘And?’

‘Well, up till now I’ve been fighting this battle virtually single-handed, juggling the job with my paying clients. Melville & Bart help out on the practical side, preparing documents, making our evidence look halfway presentable. But that’s just basic drudgery. We’re reaching a crucial stage. This is complex, sophisticated stuff, and I simply can’t do it alone. I need a deputy. Will you help?’

I blinked. I’d been wondering where the preamble was leading, but it hadn’t occurred to me that this might be its destination. ‘Look, I really don’t understand why you think any of this is my business … Why don’t you get one of your admirers to pitch in? I’m sure one of those kids would jump at the chance.’

He sighed. ‘Sadly, experience proves that the eager intern is more hindrance than help. The first had an attack of the runs, decided he’d caught cholera and insisted on being medevaced out. The second went mountain biking, hit a camel and broke her wrist – no more typing. I can’t play nanny – I’m temperamentally unsuited to it. I spend all my free time in Lira, but I need someone based there to keep the show on the road during my necessary absences. Are you interested?’ He was spooning sugar into his cappuccino as though determined not to acknowledge my disbelieving eyes.