Black and grey realism tattoo of a pocket watch with a beaded chain and looping script lettering around it, on an upper arm.

Pocket watch with script quote

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A realistic pocket watch with Roman numerals and a beaded chain sits at the centre of the design, with its hands and inner dial shaded in soft greys. Curved script lettering wraps around the watch, reading "If you always wait for the right time, the right time never begins", with the cloud-like grey shading behind the watch. The piece is in black and grey with a faint reddish tint from the skin.

Realism Lettering Upper arm Pocket watch Clock Bead Chain Script Quote Roman numeral

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Marta had been turning the pocket watch over on the workbench for the better part of an hour, thumbing the beaded chain back into a neat coil each time it slid off the sill. Outside, the beech wood came right up to the last cottage on Hollin Lane, and the light through the leaves had gone the colour of weak tea. Her father's shop smelled of oil and warm brass. He had left her the bench, the loupe, a tin of loose Roman numerals, and a note saying the Halloran order was due Friday.

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The Halloran watch was a hunter with a cracked crystal, and it had come in with its hands stopped at ten past four. Under the dial ran a hairline crack like a river on a map. For three evenings Marta had meant to tell Mrs Halloran that it could not be saved. Each evening she set the tweezers down and said tomorrow. Tomorrow, she had begun to realise, was a day that never arrived, and she had started to dislike the sound of the word.

On Thursday the wood went quiet in the way it did before rain. A young carter with mud to his knees knocked at the shop door and handed her a letter from the coach office. It was a place offer from Bristol, in her own name, for an application she had posted in March and then half forgotten, because forgetting had been easier. She read it twice while the carter waited.

She wound the Halloran watch until the crown turned stiff and set the hands by the church clock across the green. The second hand jumped and kept going. She slipped the watch into her apron pocket, tied on her hat, and walked past the last cottage into the beeches with the letter folded against it. Behind her the shop door stood open on its hinge, and the bench was left covered in work nobody else would finish.