Black and grey peacock feather tattoo with a shaded eye on the side of a finger, in a close photo of a hand.

Peacock feather on a finger

Botanical · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A shaded peacock feather runs along the side of a finger, with its eye at the base and thin barbs fanning towards the tip. The linework is fine and the feather is rendered in soft grey shading that gives it depth. The background is blurred with auburn hair, and the hand is folded so the tattoo is the clear focus.

Botanical Realism Hand Peacock feather Feather Eye Finger tattoo

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The feather arrived on a Thursday, tucked inside a tobacco tin with a note that said only keep the eye open. Mr Lusk ran the cloakroom at the Winter Palais in Margate and had never lost a coat in twenty years, so when the tin turned up beneath my ticket box I knew it was meant for me and not for the lost property book. Inside lay a single peacock feather, its eye as dark and round as a bead of wet coal, the barbs so fine I was afraid to touch them.

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Nobody at the Palais had seen who left it. The band was tuning up for the Saturday dance, the sprung floor was being waxed, and the sea came in grey through the long windows the way it always did in October. I turned the tin over in my palm and thought of Dolly Marsh, who had danced the tango with a fan of these feathers before the war and then gone off to Brighton with a sailor and never sent for her wages. Her cloakroom tickets were still in the drawer under mine, numbered and yellowing, waiting for a coat that would never be collected.

After closing I stayed behind, switched off the big chandeliers and let the streetlamp through the glass doors lay a long stripe across the boards. I pinned the feather to my lapel and took three slow steps on the wax, then four, the way Dolly used to count under her breath. The eye caught the light and seemed to open a little wider. Out past the pier a foghorn answered, and I stopped counting, and I danced anyway.