Traditional colour tattoo on a forearm showing a pocket watch, red rose and purple banners reading THIS TOO SHALL PASS.

Clock, rose and banner on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A forearm carries a traditional-style tattoo of a pocket watch framed by a red rose with green leaves and a small berry sprig. Purple banners with white lettering wrap around the arm, reading THIS, TOO, SHALL and PASS, and a yellow sun and a partial bird sit above the watch. Bold black outlines define the shapes, with solid colour in red, yellow, green and purple on pale skin against a white paper background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The clockwork in the Scarth light wanted winding every four hours, or the great lens would stop turning and the boats out past the Hanging Stones would have nothing to steer by. Dad had taught me the key, a brass thing worn smooth as a pebble, and the weights that dropped down the tower like slow plumb-bobs. I was fourteen the winter he went into the infirmary in Penzance, and the rock became mine to keep.

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Nobody warned me the mechanism would sulk. It did, that February, stopping at three in the morning with a sound like a held breath. I climbed the two hundred and nine steps with a lamp in one fist and my heart going like a trapped sparrow, sure the Kittiwake would be on the rocks by dawn. Mr Tregear's boy had left a sprig of holly on the step that afternoon, red berries and all, and I remember thinking how daft it was to be cheered by a plant while the sea was trying to eat us.

I got the escapement free with a feather and a bent pin. The lens creaked round, and light swept out over the water. Somewhere below, a gull lifted off the rail like a shaken sheet.

When the post boat came on Thursday, Ellen Tregear read the card nailed above the stove, where Dad had lettered THIS TOO SHALL PASS in square capitals years before. She laughed at him for a hard-headed sentimentalist, then looked at the cold grate and the pocket watch I'd set on the sill, its hands stopped at three. I wound it and set it going. Some things need only a hand on the key.

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