Close-up photo of a shaded gold-toned key tattoo with a treble clef in its bow, running down the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Gold key with treble clef bow on a forearm

Forearm · Colour · Photo

A large key tattoo runs vertically down the arm, with an ornate bow formed by scrolls and a treble clef at its centre. The outline is dark and the body of the key is shaded in yellow and ochre with grey shadows that give it a raised, metallic look. The key fills most of the frame against plain skin, with a dark garment visible at the edge.

Forearm Key Treble clef Scroll Music Gold

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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The key came up in the net with the crab pots on Tuesday, green with weed, its bow twisted into a shape I took at first for a fern. Mr Pascoe at the harbour office rubbed it clean with his thumb and said it was brass, then said it was gold under the green, which is the kind of thing Mr Pascoe says. The bow is scrolled like a wrought gate, and in the middle someone had worked a treble clef, looping down through the heart of it as neat as a signature.

Nobody on the island owns a piano. We have the harmonium in the chapel and the wireless the Hendersons keep on a shelf. So I carried the key up the rock to the lamp room and tried it on every lock I could find: the logbook drawer, the paraffin store, the tin where Father kept his pennies. Nothing. Then last night, with the lens turning slow over the water and the clockwork ticking like a bad metronome, I noticed a brass plate on the mechanism with a little keyhole nobody had ever used, shaped like a bow.

It turned. Beneath the plate sat a music box the size of a loaf, and when the key wound it the pins played a tune I half knew from Mother's humming, flat in the middle the way she always sang it. The beam kept sweeping. I kept winding.

I have not told the Board. I am writing to you instead, because you always said the light should be a kindness rather than a rule. Come at the autumn tides and bring your terrible singing voice. Hold the key while I turn it.

Yours, Tom