Pencil and red-coloured drawing of a pocket watch with Roman numerals, wrapped in chains and framed by three red roses and grey leaves, shown as a tattoo design.

Pocket watch and roses tattoo design

Neo-trad · Mixed · Flash

A detailed pencil drawing of an open-faced pocket watch with Roman numerals and ornate scrollwork on its face, with three red roses and grey shaded leaves around it. The roses are shaded in red with soft pencil gradients, while the watch case, chains and leaves are rendered in graphite with fine hatching and highlights. The composition is a vertical arrangement with two roses at the top, one at the lower right, and chains linking the elements on a plain pale background.

Neo-trad Realism Pocket watch Rose Chain Clock Roman numeral Leaves Scrollwork

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow had been falling on Hollin Pass for three days when the landlord's boy came down the stairs with the watch in his fist, saying the gentleman in number four had left it on the sill and would want it back before dawn. Nan Varley took it from him without looking up from the bread dough. It was a silver case gone soft at the edges, with a chain worn dull, and on the face the Roman numerals stood in a ring around a knot of curling scrollwork that somebody had taken trouble over.

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She knew the gentleman had not left it behind by accident. He had gone up the pass that morning on foot, saying he would be back by supper, and the snow had closed behind him like a lid on a pot. Still she wound the watch, because her mother had taught her to wind anything that was handed to her, and she held it to her ear. It ticked, slow and certain, and the hands stood at a quarter to four, which was the minute he had walked out of the yard.

Each night after that she wound it and set it on the sill, and each night it stood at the same minute. Travellers came and went. A carter swore the watch was broken. The boy said it was a trick of the cold. Nan only nodded and kept the fire banked.

On the third morning the wind dropped and a cart came grinding up from the valley with a woman in a grey wool cloak. She asked after her brother. Nan took the watch from the sill and opened the case so the woman could see the hands. "Quarter to four," Nan said. "He's still on the road, but he's keeping good time." The woman looked at the watch for a long while, then paid for a room and asked to be woken at the first hour.