Black and grey character face tattoo on the back of a hand, with tattooed neck, rings and watch, in a black and white photo of a person in a dark suit.

Character tattoo on the back of a hand

Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A black and white photograph of a person in a dark suit, white shirt and dark tie, with the head cropped out of frame so only the lips, a lip piercing and the neck are visible. The back of the raised hand carries a shaded character or face design with fine linework and grey tonal shading, and the neck is also tattooed. The composition is tight and high contrast, with silver rings and a wristwatch and a brick wall in the background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain comes in sideways off the harbour wall, and Mr Quill is sulking on the back of your hand again. He is painted on the knuckles in grey and black, all narrowed eyes and a grin that has seen too many Saturday crowds, and he has never once agreed to be quiet. You have stopped pretending that the card in the hall of Gull House, NO PUPPETS AFTER NINE, is about noise. It is about the way Mr Quill talks when the gas is turned down, and the way the lodgers stop on the stairs to listen through the floorboards.

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The pier shows pay for the room, just about. You stand under the striped awning with your rings catching the lamplight and your other hand in your coat pocket, counting pennies while Quill heckles the man selling toffee apples. Tonight a boy in a sailor's cap asks him where the drowned men go, and Quill, for once, does not make a joke. He says they go to the bottom of Tolley's Bay and wait to be asked their names, and the boy runs off before the crowd can laugh.

Back at the house Mrs Abernethy is waiting with her ledger open on the hall table. She says nothing about the card. She simply turns the page to a column headed MR QUILL and taps it with one finger. You lie awake with the tide grinding under the cliff and feel Quill shift against your knuckles, as if he is listening for something out on the water.

In the morning there is a cockle shell on the doormat, its inside painted with a small grey face that has your name crossed out beneath it. Beside it is a note in Mrs Abernethy's careful hand: Paid in full. Do not come back after nine.

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