A small black and grey bowler hat above a moustache tattoo on the side of the ribs.

Bowler hat and moustache on the ribs

Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A shaded bowler hat sits above a smaller moustache, both drawn in soft grey and black with subtle brown tones on the moustache. The hat has a rounded crown, a curled brim and gentle highlights, while the moustache has curled ends and a dark outline. The motifs are centred on a bare patch of skin, with the tattoo occupying the middle of the frame.

Ribs Moustache Hat

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody in Merrowdell could recall the Chancellor's face, which suited him, since he had none worth remembering. What he had was a black bowler hat, round as a pudding basin, and a moustache he kept in a tin under the ledgers and wore only on feast days. The hat was the bolder of the two. It sat on the peg by the door and told the town what the Chancellor meant to say before he opened his mouth.

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One autumn the moustache grew restless. It crept out of its tin in the night and slipped down to the river, where the ferrywoman, Hester Vane, found it drying on a willow root. She had no use for a moustache, but she had a boat and a long memory for a man's bad habits, so she rowed it back to the town steps. By then the hat had noticed the empty tin and gone looking for its partner on its own, rolling through the market at Dunmere, bumping the bread stall, and being taken by a child for a dropped pudding bowl.

They searched three days. At last Hester found the moustache clinging to the underside of a lock gate, curled tight with indignation. She wrapped it in a clean handkerchief and carried it home, and the hat, waiting on the peg, did not say a word about it.

On the feast day the Chancellor stood before the council with the tin open and his hat set straight. He pressed the moustache beneath his nose and it held. The council, who had never looked at him closely, agreed that he had the bearing of a man who could be trusted with the treasury. Nobody asked where the moustache had been, or who had been waiting for it on the peg all along.