Black and grey traditional tattoo of a striped lighthouse inside an oval rope frame with waves and a flower, on the forearm.

Lighthouse in rope frame on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A striped lighthouse with a dotted beam stands above stylised waves, enclosed in an oval rope border with a five-petal flower and leaves at the base. The design uses bold black outlines, solid black stripes on the tower, and stippled dotwork shading in the sky, waves and leaves. It is rendered entirely in black and grey ink on a forearm photographed straight on.

Traditional Dotwork Forearm Lighthouse Rope Wave Sea Flower Leaves Oval frame

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Edie counted the sweeps of the light through the ballroom windows the way other girls counted their dance cards. Every twelve seconds the beam from Harrow Point swung across the glass, lit the spilled sequins on the floor, and slid away toward the bay. Between sweeps the band played on, a clarinet too loud for the room, and the men in their demob suits steered their partners past the bandstand with the grim care of people who had learnt to dance on ships.

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She was on her third sweep of the evening with a tray of lemonade when Ray came in off the Sunderland boat, salt in his hair and his cap crushed in one fist. He had promised the Saturday before that he would be back before the last waltz. Now he stood in the doorway while the light crossed his shoulders, and he did not look at the band or at her. He watched the window, where the beam went round like a slow hand on a clock.

"They've put the storm cones up at the Point," he said. "Keeper's taken the boat out to the outer rocks. Nobody's seen him since."

Edie set the tray down on a table already sticky with rings. She thought of old Mr Pryce, who had kept that lamp for thirty years and used to say the light was only there so that somebody on the water could be certain of where they were. The clarinet stopped. Somebody cheered the wrong thing. Ray held out his hand, and she took it without a word, and they went out through the side door onto the pier, where the rope rail was wet and the sea slapped the piles like applause from underneath.

They stood at the rail and waited. The beam came round, and for the length of a breath they could see white spray on the outer rocks and a dark shape bobbing beyond them that might have been a boat or might have been nothing at all. Edie counted. Eleven. Twelve. The light came round again and found them both, and for once she did not count the next one.