Black and grey realism tattoo of a pocket watch, a rose and feathers with the script words One Life and One Chance on the upper arm.

Pocket watch and rose with One Life, One Chance

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A pocket watch with Roman numerals sits at the centre of the design, with a shaded black and grey rose to the right and feathers on the left. The script wording One Life and One Chance runs across the piece, with soft grey smoke or cloud shading behind the elements. The image is a close, slightly angled shot of the arm, with smooth grey shading and high contrast details.

Realism Upper arm Pocket watch Clock Roman numeral Rose Feather Leaves Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Marguerite had counted the seats again before the matinee, the way she counted everything now: the coconut shells on the rail, the bulbs that still lit in the big top, the pennies in the tin by the ticket booth. Forty-one people had come to see the last season of Halloran's Travelling Marvels, and most of them had come out of pity for the lion that no longer roared.

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Her grandfather's pocket watch lay on the dressing table beside the rosin box. Its face had gone the colour of weak tea, but the hands still moved, and every evening Oswin Halloran wound it and repeated the old line about the flyers, that a life in the air was measured in the seconds between the swing and the catch. He had said it so often the words had worn smooth, like the brass hinge.

Tonight the net was rigged for the first time in nine weeks. Marguerite climbed the ladder with a grey goose quill pinned to her costume, a feather she had found in the props trunk, and she thought of nothing but the bar in her hands. At the top the wind through the canvas sounded like someone turning pages. She waited for the rhythm, let go, and for one long second hung in nothing at all.

The catch came. Below, a small boy stood up in the stalls and clapped with both hands, and the watch in her pocket ticked on against her ribs, indifferent to the count. In the morning the wagons would roll for the coast. The watch could go to a pawnbroker in Leeds or stay in her pocket, and she would decide when the hands told her the time was right.