Black and grey tattoo on the side ribs of a bare torso, showing a seated woman and a rose within an ornate scrolled frame.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornate framed figure and rose on ribs

Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A tattoo of a seated female figure and a rose sits inside a tall ornate frame with scrolled, rococo-style detailing at the top and bottom. The linework is dark and detailed, with shading that gives the figure and the foliage depth. The ink is black and grey against pale skin, and the tattoo runs vertically down the side of the ribs, with a patterned fabric draped at the left edge of the frame.

Ribs Woman Seated figure Rose Ornate frame Scrollwork

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Okafor-Hale wanted the frame cleaned before it went to the auction house, and Tomasz had given it three weeks. He worked with a cotton swab and a little white spirit, lifting a century of brown varnish from the scrolls at the crown and the foot, until the gilt came up like a struck match. The girl in the middle stayed where she had always been, perched on her carved bench with one knee drawn up and her head tipped toward the rose that hung above her. Someone had painted over that rose twice. He could see the ridges of it under the lamp.

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On the third Thursday the backing board came loose in his hands. Folded between it and the panel was a sheet of paper gone the colour of weak tea, written in pencil in a hand that leaned hard to the right. It said only: For E., who will wait for me under the rose, followed by a date in 1911 and nothing else. Tomasz read it twice and set it on the bench beside the spirit bottle, where he could see it while he worked. He thought about the two coats of paint, and how easy it would be to tidy the whole thing back into the shape the auction house expected.

He did not. He cleaned the rose down to its original petals, pale pink under the grime, and left the girl's face as the painter had made it, unfinished and patient. When Mrs Okafor-Hale collected it she turned the frame over, read the pencil note, and went very quiet. She asked him to hang it back in the hall rather than send it anywhere.

Tomasz walked her to the door, and on the way out she stopped beneath the frame and looked up at the rose, the only bright thing in that dim house.