Latin script tattoo across the lower back

Your mother rang on Sunday to say the clearance men have finally emptied the bungalow on Mill Lane, and that you were the one who asked for the brass plate off the front door. I have kept the other thing, the one you never asked for: the motto Mr Ashdown had cut into the lintel of the old bell foundry when he bought it in 1971. He insisted on translating it for every boy who came to his Latin club. He said it meant the fighting never finishes, and that was the whole point of it.

You will remember the lettering. He had it done by a stonemason from Stroud who used a looping hand for the capitals, and then, because he could never leave well alone, a flourish under the last word like a stroke of a pen that has got away from its owner. The rain has taken most of the edge off it now. I went down with a torch on Thursday and traced the grooves with my fingertip, the way you used to trace the declensions on the desk.

I found something else in the drawer of his workbench: a receipt from the foundry, dated the week before the bell was recast, with a note in his square capitals. "Ring it for the ones who came back." That was all. No one in the village knew what it meant, and I expect he knew that too.

Come down before the new people arrive. I have left the torch on the hall table, and the key is under the pot where it always was.