Four people's inner wrists show matching black script tattoos reading No 1/4, No 2/4, No 3/4 and No 4/4, with a key design beside No 3/4.

Four numbered wrist tattoos, 1/4 to 4/4

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Four forearms are shown one above another, each with a black script inscription reading No 1/4, No 2/4, No 3/4 and No 4/4. The third tattoo also includes a detailed key with an ornate bow and bit, drawn in fine black linework. The ink is solid black and the image has a plain, light background with even lighting.

Lettering Fine line Forearm Key Number Script Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The show had been dying for three winters when Old Tom Pennock cut the key in four, because he did not trust one pair of hands with the wagon that held the last of the takings. He filed the blank in the lee of the big top, and each piece was given to someone who had stayed with the ring through the bad years: the tumbler, the strongman's wife, the boy who fed the bears, and the woman who kept the books. Each piece bore a number scratched beside its bow, and each person was to wear that number at the wrist so nobody could claim another's share.

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Winter came hard. The ring sold its horses at Bristol, the canvas rotted on the poles, and the wagon was left in a barn outside Taunton with the frost lying on its roof. The four of them met there at the turn of the year to open the box. Nobody wanted to be the first to turn a key that belonged to three others.

The boy, grown now, said the box would hold nothing but handbills and a tin of sovereigns, enough for one fare to the coast. The tumbler said they would split it. The woman with the books laughed and said that was the first lie Tom had ever told her that she believed. They turned the key together, four hands on one bow, and the lid lifted on the tin and a folded ledger.

The ledger showed the show had never belonged to one man. Each of them had paid the same into it every week for forty years, and Tom had written each payment beside a name. They counted the coins four ways on the barn floor and went home to four different towns. The key, they say, hangs now in a farmhouse window near Taunton, where the morning light comes through the bow.