Fine script lettering reading alpha, beta, beginning and end glows blue across several fingers under UV light.

Glowing script words on fingers under UV light

Lettering · Hand · Colour · Photo

Four words in cursive script are inked along the fingers of a hand: alpha, beta, beginning and end. Under ultraviolet light the ink glows a bright blue, so the lettering stands out sharply against the purple-toned background. The composition is close and angled, with the fingers running diagonally across the frame.

Lettering Hand Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ada, the Marigold is tied up below Brentford lock and the river has gone quiet the way it does before rain. Your letter reached me at Teddington with the price of coal in it, and I read it twice on the stern while the kettle boiled. You asked why Father would not come to the stone-yard. I have no answer that would fit on this paper, so I will tell you about the lamp instead.

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The lamp is a violet tube Mr Oakes sold us in Rotherhithe, the kind the music halls use to make their paint sing. Oakes keeps a shop by the timber wharf and has a steady hand with a needle. Last winter he did our fingers for night loading, four words each, so a man could tell his boat without a candle. Alpha on the first finger for the lead barge, beta for the second, beginning and end on the last two for the bridle and the hook. Under the tube they burn a clean blue, and the whole crew looks like it is carrying its own map.

Last Thursday the fog came down at Kew and Sam Pryce went over the side with the tow rope. We heard him shout and could not see him at all. Then Jim held up his hand under the lamp, and the words blazed across the water, end, end, end, and Sam's answering hand came out of the murk with beginning written across it. We hauled him in by the glow of our own knuckles.

I am not sure what it means that a man's hands can be read in the dark. I only know the tow reached Brentford on time and Sam has a cough. Write to me care of the lock. I will be on the water until the first frost, and I will keep the lamp charged for you.