Black and grey realism tattoo of an ornate pocket watch with a looping chain, shown on skin.

Pocket watch and chain in realism style

Realism · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A pocket watch with an ornate engraved case and a dial showing Arabic numerals and hour and minute hands sits at the centre, with its chain looping down and across the lower part of the image. The shading is smooth and detailed, with soft highlights on the metal case and deep shadows under the watch, giving it a three-dimensional look. The image is entirely black and grey and the design fills most of the frame against plain skin.

Realism Other Pocket watch Chain Clock face Numeral Clock hand

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The estate men dragged the moat again on Tuesday, and it was the dredger's chain that brought up your father's watch, or what the water had left of it. I know you said to leave the castle alone and sell the stones to the farm man, but I could not let the thing go to a scrap heap. The case was still heavy with silver, its scrollwork thick with silt, and the chain hung off it in a loop as if it had been let down to drink.

The hands had stopped at twenty past four. I sat on the broken steps of the north tower and wiped the glass with my sleeve until the numerals came up grey through the cloud. I thought about how Grandmother used to wind it every Sunday after church, counting the turns under her breath as if the castle clock were listening. Nobody has wound the great clock in the gatehouse since the war. The mechanism rusted, the bell cracked, and the village has been told the hour by the church ever since.

Thursday I took the watch to Harry Pole in Market Lacey, who has mended everything from threshing machines to a bishop's ring. He opened the back, tipped out a little grit, and said it would go again if we were patient. He would not take money. He asked only where it had come from, and when I told him the moat, he laughed and said the castle had always kept what it was given.

So it is ticking now on the windowsill beside me, a little fast, and I have set it by the church. Come up in the spring and bring the good kettle. I will show you where the chain caught on the stone, and you can tell me whether you still want the place sold.

Love, Aunt Bea