Black and grey traditional-style tattoo of a bird on a branch, with a ribbon banner spiralling down the forearm bearing a quote.

Bird and quote banner on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A bird perches on a small branch at the top of the forearm, with a ribbon banner wrapping down the arm beneath it. The banner carries a quote in capital letters, rendered in bold black outline with grey shading on the folds. The image is a close, evenly lit view of the forearm with a plain pale background and the person's hand open at the bottom of the frame.

Traditional Lettering Forearm Bird Branch Banner Ribbon Quote Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The swallow had nested in the eaves of the signal box for three summers running, and by June the whole of Tollesby Junction knew its habits better than some of the porters knew their wives. I was seventeen that year and worked the levers on the early shift, so I watched it come and go from the window while the Leeds goods rattled through below.

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My brother Walter had a case packed under the stairs with a cardigan, a tin of Woodbines and a timetable cut out of the Gazette. He was off to the boats at Hull on the Monday. Mam didn't say much about it. She went to the Co-op, came back with a length of cheap satin ribbon, and pinned a card to the lapel of his good jacket with the words written in pencil: Rise free from care before the dawn and seek adventures. Walter read it aloud twice in the kitchen and then laughed until he had to sit down on the coal bunker.

On the Monday the platform was grey and wet. I signalled his train out at ten past five, and as the guard's van slid past the box the swallow dropped off the gutter, skimmed the cinders and climbed straight up after the carriage roof until I lost it against the sky. Walter had his hand out of the window. I thought he was waving at me. Later I found the card had come off his jacket and was stuck to the bottom step of the box, its pencil blurred by the rain.

I kept it in the levers' drawer. Mam still keeps the bread bin lid where she first wrote the words. Walter sends a postcard from a different port each year, and every one ends with the same four words scribbled small in the corner, as if he were still pinning them to his jacket.