Nigel's New Clothing — Abby Pelaez

Nigel’s New Clothing

By Abby Pelaez, 2016. To be edited and rewritten.

Nigel had seen the BBC’s tweet on further protectionism measures, so he understood why the insipid nurse reduced his medication by half. What was boggling was the number of painful pills she had him swallow remained the same.

On the bed, Nigel raised a gnarled, liver-spotted finger as the nurse finished putting his shoes on. “You expect me to double my pain tolerance, old hag? Why the bloody hell would you not buy the same strength of pills in fewer quantity?!” He coughed up some wet dust from the bottom of his lungs. These refugees were all the same. He doubted she could pass a secondary school entrance exam.

“You know how it is, Mr. —,” Tahia cooed in her accent as her wiry frame lifted his suited, sagging body into the wheelchair. “Rations, rations.”

Nigel recalled a time when he’d have roared disapproval in damning rhetoric. A penguin huddle of suited men (and, he supposed, women) would have stomped their shoes on the legislature desks to back him up. Now, no one listened to Nigel’s awful irony that after having successfully divorced the UK from the Eurozone under the stance of strict immigration reform, second-rate nurses who’d taken online certifications instead of bachelor’s degrees were the only option to take care of him while a brain drain of health care providers left for Europe.

For the first time this morning he acknowledged the eye contact she had been patiently keeping up. Even though she’d never ran any grueling campaign nor juggled a national portfolio, her wrinkle-rimmed, bright peepers imparted Nigel with the weight of years of farm labour and fleeing war. Tahia’s children were safely English-accented and, she claimed, enrolled in Oxford.

Tahia settled him into the restrictive chair and loaded his things. Nigel composed himself, then spoke softly to pacify his lungs. “You could have told the lot at the pharmacy how my bloody arthritis swells a load and my hacking cough is rattling my heart”- Nigel realized he was complaining again about things his uncommitted nurse wasn’t going to do anything about. “The idiots who run the NHS. Bloody waste of taxpaper pounds.” Not that he’d always paid his full share. “Maybe Labour was right. Need to go in all the way or not at all, or else health care goes to the dogs, with the excuse for home care we have to deal with.” From the privacy of his apartment bedroom, he could say such blasphemy. And it didn’t matter if Tahia heard it.

“Where you want to go today, Mr.?” Tahia’s face showed no injury. Nigel twitched. But for all her incompetence in getting past medicine rations, at least she was the closest thing to a Victorian butler one could get.

“The House of Commons, if you please.”

Tahia fitted his sunglasses over his face. She put his rainbucket hat on, the sloped brim obscuring his face. She wheeled him across the flooring and out the front door, her finger unconsciously moving to her phone to lock the apartment.

Nigel suffered goosebumps as he felt a grave absence in his armour. “Wait!” The cry got him coughing again. Tahia pulled out his incontinence wipes and gently cleaned the phlegm that dribbled down his chins. “My mace,” he whispered.

“Ah.” Tahia nodded sagely. The entitlement of her! “Of course we wouldn’t forget your favourite clothing, emperor.”

“Bloody hell..?” Nigel garbled. Had she acknowledged the regality of the mace or made some veiled reference to the folk story of the emperor’s new clothing? Surely the former. Those refugees didn’t know children’s stories, yet alone high-caliber literature. Tahia hurried back and retrieved the item Nigel never left without. His handcrafted cane was true to the design of the Speaker of the House’s ceremonial mace, with added curve crowning it for grip. He grasped the kingly cane from her helping hands and felt the smoothed wood that had molded to his hand, examined the toughened base that had supported his steps until recent years. “Carry on, then.”

Entering the crisp autumn air on the sidewalk, Nigel took in the gang of Muslims texting as they walked to school, Chinese professionals hailing cabs, and all the young Indian families strolling Chelsea street. Everyone seemed at home. Nigel touched the mace, something familiar from better times.

They passed one middle-aged man in a cheap suit with plastic eyeglasses. “Oy, you’re that old politician, innit?” Tahia wheeled Nigel away from the man, who planted himself in their way, foot traffic on either side making a human river that trapped them.

Nigel staunchly ignored him and gripped his mace with trembling hands. It was Parkinson’s, he assured himself.

“Not him. My father. Common mistake”, Tahia lied politely. She decisively rolled him away before more questions could come. “Don’t worry, Mr. We’re ok.”

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

They arrived at the public entrance to the House of Commons. It was attended by an East Indian woman with an intern’s government ID around her neck. Her eyes widened, aghast.

“You’re the bloke from the 2010’s! The one who spearheaded the fiasco!”

Tahia waved her arm as only a devilish grandmother could. “No, naughty girl, you’re wrong. Go back and study so you become smart and successful.”

She sputtered but held her ground. “I know my history lessons. I still keep track of whatever happened to.” She addressed Nigel with a scowl. “You are a disgrace. You fought to divorce us from our allies and then you threw your hands up, said it’s all well and done and did what you wanted to do, and then left a right mess of things, innit? How did you feel when people lost their jobs, mate? When groceries became expensive and health care and the economy took a nosedive?”

Nigel listened, unable to move yet struggling to control his trembles. “My parents struggled to find housing and work in Liverpool,” the young woman said. “I and many of my generation will likely have to leave the country to find opportunities that no longer exist here. You took the coward’s route, and ran from the spotlight when things went tits up. Are you proud of yourself, mate?”

Nigel swallowed his shame and gripped his mace. “I fought for what was best for my country, young lady. Times were bloody different then. We lived in axes of terrorism and global security was the utmost priority.”

“You’re just parroting the fear-mongering they had at the time. That’s not how it was.” She shook her head in disgust. “It’s my country too and it wasn’t the best for me.” She stormed away.

Nigel held his head in one hand and rubbed his forehead. He held on tight to the mace with the other. “Please, Tahia, let us continue to the House of Commons.” They silently approached the gates that separated the staff and legislators from the public.

Nigel withdrew his mace and rested it on the sidewalk. Steeling himself, he braced his weight on it to lift his swollen knees to their best height. The pain didn’t get dizzying because Tahia, always there, guided his arm and supported the rest of him as he stood up from the wheelchair to survey the house of power where he had fallen. It was the closest he’d be able to get to it.

“Thank you, Tahia,” he said after a long time.

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