Black line drawing of a stylised peacock with a curled crest, swirling tail feathers and decorative patterning, shown as a tattoo design on white.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornamental peacock line drawing

Black and grey · Flash

A stylised peacock faces up and to the left, with a curled head crest and a long tail of feathers that sweep down the page. The black outline is filled with scrolls, teardrop shapes, dots and heart-shaped motifs in the feather eyes. The drawing is shown on a plain white background, with the tail spreading out at the bottom to balance the composition.

Peacock Feather Swirl Scroll Ornament Heart Crest

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The cook on the Marigold Rose has a peacock's tail pinned above the range, and I have decided it is the only thing aboard that keeps its temper. Mr Fenwick brought it back from Calcutta in a tin box, three months before I signed on, and he will not say whom he bought it from. The feathers have gone soft at the tips, but the eyes still look at you when the lamp swings. Every one has a heart cut into its middle, as though someone was counting on the sea to be kind.

Yesterday the galley floor went under in the swell and I spent the afternoon on my knees scrubbing spilt treacle out of the curls of the crest, the bit where the head should be. Mrs Abney, who runs the galley with a ladle and a grudge, said I was wasting elbow grease on a picture. I told her a picture is what a man looks at when he has nothing else, and she told me to mind my tongue and my onions.

Last night I took the tail down to shake the dust from it. Pasted to the back of the board was a page torn from a ledger, with a list of names in neat brown ink. Eleven of them. Beside each one, a small heart, the same shape as the feather eyes. Fenwick's sister, perhaps, or the men who signed on before the last storm and never came back up the gangway. I cannot tell. I put the page back exactly as I found it, and I have not said a word to anyone.

We make port on Thursday. I shall buy you a proper bird for your wall, one with nothing hidden behind it, and you can hang it in the front room where the light is kind.

Your brother, Tom