Black linework tattoo of a hanging sign reading Gone to Market on the top of a foot, in a simple hand-drawn lettering style.

Gone to Market hanging sign on foot

Lettering · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A bare foot with a small hanging sign tattoo on the upper side, near the midfoot. The sign is outlined in black with a cord or chain above it, and the words Gone to Market are written across it in a simple, hand-drawn lettering. The image is shown in black ink with shading only, against a dark plastic sheet.

Lettering Other Sign Text Foot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The sign swung on its chain above the trestle table, the way it always did when the wind came off the river. My grandmother had painted it the summer the footbridge was closed, and since then I had hung it up each morning and taken it down each evening, so that anyone coming along the towpath would know the eggs had sold and the stall was empty. Gone to Market. It was a small lie, but a polite one, and in our town politeness had kept more people fed than bread had.

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On the Tuesday after the frost, a boy in a borrowed coat stopped at the table and read the board twice. He had a parcel wrapped in brown paper tucked under one arm and the look of someone who had been walking since before light. 'Is the market shut?' he asked. I told him the eggs were gone but the cheese was not, and that the afternoon bell would ring soon enough. He kept staring at the sign, the way you stare at a door you have been told not to open yet.

He bought a wedge of cheese and paid in coins that were worth nothing on either bank, so I gave him his change in bread. When he left, he forgot the parcel. Inside was a tin of copper wire and a folded note in careful capitals: THE SIGN IS ONLY TRUE IF YOU TURN IT OVER. I did not understand, not until the guards came along the towpath at dusk asking after a boy with a brown parcel. I unhooked the board with shaking hands and turned it over. On the back, in my grandmother's looping hand, was the rest of the sentence: and back before the bell.