Close view of a woman's upper arm with four black blackwork playing card suits in descending size, plus a small red heart on the hand.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Playing card suits down the upper arm

Blackwork · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

Four black ornamental playing card suits, a heart, club, spade and diamond, run diagonally down the outer upper arm, each smaller than the one above. The fills use fine patterned detailing and solid black areas. A small solid red heart sits on the back of the hand, and the woman holds a cigarette in the same frame. The soft, neutral background keeps the focus on the tattoos.

Blackwork Upper arm Hand Heart Club Spade Diamond Playing card

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ada, the road closed on Tuesday and it has not reopened, so you will have to take my word for everything that has happened at the Coldharbour since. The snow came past the windowsills by Wednesday, and a Mr Pryce came in off the Lanark road with a leather case and a cough that rattled the glasses. He asked Father for a room and a game. Father said the inn was no place for cards, but Mr Pryce only laid four cards on the bar, one after another, each cut smaller than the last. A heart, a club, a spade, and a diamond no bigger than my thumbnail, every one inked with fine patterns like lace on a widow's collar.

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He said each card was a wager. The heart was for a week's board, the club for the good brandy, the spade for the mare in the snow shed. Father, who has never once refused a wager he could not afford, sat down with his spectacles pushed up and played. He lost the heart and the club. He lost the spade and went quiet in the way he does when the books don't balance. Mr Pryce dealt slowly, as if the snow were setting the pace, and the little diamond sat between them on the wood like a coin nobody wanted to pick up.

Father put the deed to the north field on the bar, and Mr Pryce looked at it for a long time before he slid the diamond across to meet it. I will not tell you what Father held. I will tell you that the cough stopped, that Mr Pryce laughed once, and that by dawn he had gone out of the back door with no tracks at all, because the snow had filled them before he reached the gate.

I swept the bar this morning. The diamond is in my apron pocket. It is lighter than it looks and warmer than it should be. Write soon, and tell Tom the road may open by Friday if the wind turns. Your loving sister, Nell.