Orchid tattoo design in linework

The orchid came up out of the ruin of the east range on Tuesday, wedged between two fallen stones where the old cloister used to drain. Mrs Hallam says it has no business living in lime mortar, and yet there it was, one bloom open and the rest still furled like folded letters. I have drawn it four times now. The first sheets I threw in the grate because the petals looked like wet paper and not like anything that could hold its own weight.

On the fifth morning I stopped trying to copy the flower and simply followed its veins with the nib, the way you would follow a river on a map. Each vein split and split again until it became a hair. The lower lip curled back on itself into a scroll, the way the iron gates at the lodge curl, and when I looked up from the paper the dew had gathered in little beads along the outline. I pressed my pen into them so the ink would hold the same points of light. You will laugh, but I think the dots are the only honest thing on the page.

Mrs Hallam came out at noon with her tea and asked whether it was finished. I told her it was not, and that I did not think it ever would be, because a thing that grows out of a wall is never quite done with the wall. She took the sheet, held it up against the grey sky, and said the lines looked like they had been drawn by something that had been waiting a long time to be let out.

I am sending the drawing on with the carrier tomorrow. Keep the nib clean for me.

Yours, Tom