Black and grey realism tattoo of orchids and flower buds with cursive script across the shoulder and upper arm.

Black and grey orchids and script on upper arm

Realism · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo covers the shoulder and upper arm with large realistic orchids, lily-like blooms and closed buds, with stems and leaves at the top edge. Cursive script runs through the design, with the words "you know" and "Love" clearly legible among partly obscured lines. The shading is smooth and greyscale, with soft highlights on the petals and deep shadows in the centres of the flowers.

Realism Botanical Lettering Shoulder Upper arm Orchid Flower Bud Leaves Script Quote

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

"You know what they say about the orchids on the back wall, Doreen said, and I told her I didn't, because I'd only been coming to the Crescent a fortnight and nobody had yet explained the wallpaper to me. She laughed, took my hand and steered me off the floor before the Saturday waltz could swallow us whole. 'Harold Speight painted every one,' she said. 'Paid in fish suppers and a season ticket. Look at the centres, Edie. Dark as a cellar. That's where the lovers stand when the lights go down.'

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I looked, and the flowers did seem to lean toward the bandstand, their petals going soft at the edges where Harold had blended the grey. Stanley Pryce was up there that night with his clarinet, the tram conductor who had stopped his number seven twice that week just to watch me cross the road. He was no dancer. He counted under his breath, one two three, and trod on my hem twice, apologising each time like a man who had dropped a tray of cups. Between numbers he came down the steps with his cap in his hands.

He had written something on the back of a tram ticket. He pushed it into my glove without a word, the way you'd pass a pawn ticket across a counter. The lines ran in a curling hand that wandered off the card: you know, it said, you're in love, and then a bit I couldn't read because the ink had run where his thumb had held it. I folded it small and kept it against my palm through the foxtrot, and I could feel its corners like a second pulse.

When the band struck up the last waltz, I walked straight to the back wall and stood in the dark centre of Harold's biggest bloom, where nobody could see my face. Then I turned around. Stanley had already put down his clarinet. I held up the ticket so he could see the one line that had survived, and I said yes before he could ask me anything at all."