Black ink cross with looped, brush-like strokes and a light inner highlight, sitting on the upper back below the neck of a person with blonde hair.

Looped cross on the upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A black ink cross with looped, brush-like strokes sits on the upper back, just below the base of the neck. The lines are bold, with light inner highlights along the strokes, and the design is shown in black and grey. The photo is taken from behind, with a hand resting at the lower left and a dark top and tiled background around the figure.

Back Cross

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You have the brush loaded before Mr Hallam finishes his tea, because the church wants its noticeboard repainted by Saturday and the vicar will not pay for a man from Leeds. The board hangs on two iron hooks above the lychgate of St Oswin's in Thornly Bridge, and the cross on it has faded to the colour of weak milk. You dip the sable, wipe it on the lip of the tin, and start where your grandfather taught you, with the loop at the top, one stroke, never lifting until the curve closes.

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The trick is the highlight. You leave a sliver of bare board running down the inside of each stroke, so the black seems to turn in the light like wet rope. Mrs Pargeter comes out of the post office to watch, as she has every morning since the war, and tells you the cross looks like something a child would draw with a wet thumb. You do not answer. Her husband died in the spring, and the cross was his idea. He wanted it painted properly before the frost.

By four o'clock the arms are done, four loops swelling outwards like the ends of a ribbon, and the foot runs long down the board. You stand back on the cobbles with the brush still in your hand and watch the low sun catch the pale slivers until the whole thing looks lit from inside. Mrs Pargeter has gone quiet. She lifts her hand, the way people do in church, and you find that you are holding your breath.

Let it dry, the vicar says, and you do, and when the rain comes that night the black does not run once.