Chinese character tattoo on the side of the body

Forty years back there was a sign-writer called Wen Hao Pryce who came to Keighley to paint shopfronts and stayed on to teach me the brush. He held my wrist like it was a bird. He drew the character for love across the back of a delivery docket and told me it has a roof on top, two hands passing something underneath, and a heart tucked at the very bottom where nobody looks first. You draw the roof before you can keep the heart warm, he said. Most people start at the heart and wonder why the ink runs off the page.

Ward Four had a woman in bay two, Mrs Ivy Corrigan, who could no longer hold a pen. Her son asked me to help him write her name on a card for the window, the way they did at Christmas. He had never held a brush in his life and pressed too hard, so the ink fanned out like a spilt bird. I told him to lift off at the end of each stroke and let it breathe. He did it nine times before it looked right, and she watched from her pillow and said it was the first thing anyone had drawn for her that she could actually read.

Ivy died at ten past four, which is the hour that matters, and her son went home with the card still wet at the edges. I kept the brush. Here, feel the weight of it. Now draw me the roof, and don't you dare start with the heart.