Love script tattoo on a finger

The ferry didn't run again on Tuesday, so the gold leaf came over on the post boat with the bread, and I have spent two days in the boatshed trying not to breathe on the wet paint. Mr Gillies wants a new name on the Morag Rose, the one his brother painted in 1962 that has been flaking off since. He wants it in copperplate, and he wants it small, on the inside of the stern where the tiller rubs, not on the outside where the gulls would see it.

I asked him what the word was. He said it was the only word his wife ever wrote him that he kept, then went red and told me to get on with it and stop being nosy.

So I've been working with a fine sable and one pot of black enamel, no shading, no flourish beyond the loops the old hand gives you for free. The L takes the longest. You have to lift the brush at exactly the right moment or the stroke turns into a bruise. I did it eleven times on a board before I trusted my wrist, and by the sixth I was saying the word under my breath the way you'd hum to a child going to sleep.

This morning he took the boat out in a flat calm and I watched from the slip. He was at the tiller with his hand resting on the wood, right where the letters sit against his knuckles. I'd told him the enamel needed till Friday to cure, and he said he'd keep his thumb off it. Write back soon, and tell Mam I'm eating.

Ada