Black and grey traditional tattoo of a coffee cup with a dark liquid splash and beans on the forearm, with a shaded rose above it.

Coffee cup and beans on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo of a decorative cup with scrollwork and a banded rim, with dark liquid splashing into it and several coffee beans scattered below. Bold outlines and grey shading give the cup volume, and a shaded rose sits at the top edge of the frame. The forearm is shown from the wrist upwards with a relaxed hand and teal nail polish.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The urn in the cookhouse tent has not been scrubbed since Whitsun, and you are the only one left who knows how to coax a decent cup from it. Outside, the painted lions are being loaded onto a flatbed bound for a farm near Carlisle, and the ringmaster has taken to sleeping in his top hat. You pour the black stuff into the cracked china cup you keep for yourself, the one with the banded rim and the scrolled belly that Nell Harrow bought at a jumble sale in Hull the year the big top still had its red stripe.

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Eight coffee beans are left in the tin on the trestle, though you have counted them every morning this week as if they might multiply. Mr Okonedo, who throws knives for the Sunday matinee, once tipped a whole sack of them across the sawdust to show the children what luck looked like, and they rolled under the wagon steps and were never swept up. Nobody sweeps the ground any more. They are probably still there, waiting for a spring that is not coming.

On the last night, six people buy tickets for the early house. You sit at the back with your cup going cold, watching the aerialist climb the rope in a costume patched at both knees, and when the band strikes up the final waltz you realise you have not drunk a mouthful. Afterwards Nell finds you with a bucket of water and a face like a shut gate. The cookhouse is to be let to the council for storage, she says, and the urn goes with it.

You tip what is left in the cup onto the grass, a dark splash the rain will have gone by morning, and pocket the last bean for the drive south. Then you fold the tent flap back and leave the cup upturned in the wet, where it can keep its own counsel.

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