Colour tattoo on a calf combining a realistic black and grey gorilla head with a bold outlined line drawing of a bald man in glasses, set against red, blue and grey geometric shapes.

Gorilla and line-drawn face on a calf

Realism · Calf · Mixed · Photo

A realistic black and grey gorilla head sits over an outlined line drawing of a bald man wearing round glasses, with the face shown in profile and three quarters view. Behind them, flat red, blue, grey and rainbow geometric shapes frame the design, with a large red circle and a dark triangle at the top. The gorilla uses soft shading and fine fur texture, while the line drawing and shapes are solid colour with clean black outlines.

Realism Geometric Calf Man Glasses Face Triangle Circle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

By the third week of the Michaelmas fair the red sun painted over the ghost-train entrance has faded to the colour of brick, and you are the one who has to climb the ladder to touch it up. Mr Hollis, the Professor, stands below in his round steel spectacles, a cup of stewed tea going cold in his hand, and tells you the gorilla is not to be disturbed before the evening show. Duchess has been quiet since Leeds. She sits in the back of the caravan on a folding chair you bought her from a church jumble sale, and she watches you the way the Professor watches a ticket queue: patiently, as if she is already counting the change.

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You do not believe she understands the posters. But on Thursday you found the Professor's ledger open on the trestle, and beneath the column of takings someone had drawn a triangle in pencil, then a circle, then a square with a face inside it. Only Duchess has the patience for that kind of drawing, a stub of pencil held in one huge black fist. When you showed him, the Professor said nothing. He took off his spectacles, polished them on his waistcoat, and put them back on, slower than usual.

On the last night the wind came off the river and tore the blue pennant loose. You chased it through the stalls, past the candied apple van and the coconut shy, and when you turned back the caravan door was open. Duchess stood in the lamplight with the Professor's glasses balanced on her brow, staring out over the fairground like a magistrate. Then she looked at you, lifted them off, and set them on your nose before climbing back into the dark.

On Monday the Professor paid you a full week's wages in a brown envelope. Beside the money lay a pair of round steel spectacles with one lens cracked clean across. He had written nothing on the envelope, which was how you knew he had decided something. You wear them now when you climb the ladder to paint the sun, and from up there the whole fairground looks like a drawing someone else is still making.