Pencil drawing of a pocket watch with a Roman numeral face, shaded roses and leaves, and the words In a while crocodile, a design for a tattoo.

Pocket watch with roses pencil design

Neo-trad · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil sketch of an ornate pocket watch with a numbered face, the words In a while crocodile across the dial, and a Roman numeral marking. Two shaded roses and several leaves surround the watch, with hatched pencil shading giving the leaves and petals depth. The drawing is black and grey on a pale sheet, centred on the watch with the flowers framing it at the top and bottom.

Neo-trad Botanical Pocket watch Clock Rose Leaves Script Roman numeral

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mr Oduya had kept the shop on Bold Street for thirty-one years, and in all that time nobody had brought in a pocket watch still ticking after a dunking in the Mersey. The boy who carried it through the door was about eleven, his cap dripping, his sister waiting on the step. He wanted two shillings. The case was silver, the lid worn smooth by a thumb, and the Roman numerals ran down the dial like a column of small soldiers.

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"Where did you get it?" Oduya asked.

"Off my dad. He said to say it's only a loan."

Oduya prised the lid open. Someone had scratched two roses into the inner cover, clumsily, with the point of a nail, and beneath them three words in a looping hand: in a while. Then, underneath that, smaller still, crocodile. He had heard the joke a hundred times from his grandmother, who said the crocodile in the old story had swallowed a clock and you could hear it ticking from the river bank, coming for you.

He gave the boy four shillings and told him to come back in a fortnight. The boy did not come back. Oduya put the watch on the shelf behind the till, beside the brass scales, and on Thursdays he wound it. Sometimes, after closing, he said the words aloud to the empty shop, and the watch kept on ticking as if it had been waiting for someone to finish the sentence.