Face tattoo on upper arm

The engine shed roof leaked again on Tuesday, so I sat in the waiting room at Ashby Junction with the lamp turned low and your sketchbook open on my knee. I kept turning to the page where you drew the face. Nobody at the station has seen it but me. Mr Pryce asked what it was supposed to be, and I told him a sun that had lost its way home.

You will remember the feathers were the difficult part. You worked them as a crown of long dark strokes, each one shaded lighter at the tip, until the head seemed to sit inside a storm of wings. I tried it myself on the back of a timetable with a pencil stub and got it all wrong, the plumes turned into fishbones. Your version is still the only one that looks as if it might lift off the paper if the wind came through the door.

The 6.40 came in late this morning with its windows fogged, and a stranger got down from the third carriage with a battered case and a coat too thin for the weather. She stood on the platform looking at the clock as if it owed her money. I thought of you then. You always said a face is only a face until somebody stares at it long enough to see it breathe.

Come home at Easter. Bring the sketchbook and the good charcoal, the one from Leeds. I have kept the waiting room lamp lit for you.

Your loving brother, Tom