Navy line drawing of a pocket watch, rose, leaves and beads with a banner reading TIME HEALS ALL WOUNDS, shown as a tattoo design on paper.

Pocket watch, rose and banner design

Traditional · Colour · Flash

The drawing shows a pocket watch with Roman numerals at the centre, framed by a rose on the left, several leaves and a chain of beads. A banner across the bottom reads TIME HEALS ALL WOUNDS. The linework is bold, even navy ink with no shading, set on a cream background.

Traditional Botanical Pocket watch Clock Rose Leaves Bead Banner Roman numeral Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Feathers carried the watch in wrapped in a green handkerchief and set it on the counter as though it might wake. Dennis Parr opened the back with his thumbnail, tilted the movement under the lamp and said the mainspring had gone, slowly and then all at once, the way they always did. He sent Kit to the drawer of old pinions and told Mrs Feathers the rose on the case could be polished but not replaced, because nobody in Hastings could cut a rose like the one that had been there since 1931.

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Kit worked through the afternoon with the movement laid out on a square of green felt. Dennis hummed a hymn that did not quite fit its tune and checked each wheel through the magnifier pushed up on his forehead. Near five he watched the balance swing, steady as a pulse, and nodded. Kit turned the case over and found a banner engraved inside the lid, its letters worn almost smooth: TIME HEALS ALL WOUNDS. He asked whether Dennis believed it. 'I believe the oil believes it,' Dennis said, 'and that's the most I'll promise anyone.'

At six Mrs Feathers came back and held the watch to her ear with her eyes shut. She listened for a long while. Then she asked Kit to show her how to wind it, because her husband had done it every night for forty years and she had never once learned. Kit showed her, three turns and no more, and she counted them under her breath. She set the hands herself, to ten to four, and Dennis did not argue.

When she had gone, Kit wrote the job in the repair book. Under the date, Dennis made him add a line in smaller writing: customer wishes the watch kept to the hour and wound on Sundays. It was not really a repair. It was a kindness, and the book had room for both.