Traditional style illustration of a woman in profile wearing two red roses in curled grey hair, with a black silhouette behind her, shown as a printed artwork on a wooden table.

Profile portrait with red roses in curled hair

Traditional · Mixed · Flash

A woman faces left in profile, with two red roses set in voluminous grey curled hair and a pale, rosy cheek. The linework is bold and black, with shaded grey hair and a dark silhouette filling the left side of the frame. The figure sits on a warm brown wash background, and the image is a printed artwork on white card photographed on a wooden surface.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mother set her hair on Monday nights, the evening before the boat, because she said a woman who meant to leave should look as though she had planned it. I held the tin of kirby grips while she rolled the grey curls back from her face. The lamp threw her shadow across the wallpaper, a dark profile that kept its back to us even when she turned to the glass.

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The roses came from the wall behind the chapel on Carn Vellan, the only red thing that would grow there once the salt winds started. She pinned two into the crown of her hair, one set a little higher than the other, and rubbed colour into her cheeks with the ball of her thumb. 'Your father liked roses,' she said, which was the only thing she ever said about him that night.

He had gone on the spring boat with one case and a promise to send for us. The letters never came, so she told the island she was seeing a dressmaker on the mainland about a wedding dress, and nobody on Carn Vellan asked whose wedding. On Tuesday morning I stood on the quay with my hands in my coat while the horn sounded twice, and I watched her walk down the slipway, straight-backed, the roses bright against the grey.

She did not come back for the roses. By Thursday they had browned on the windowsill of the empty kitchen, and I pressed one into the ledger where the fares were written. Every Monday since, I have set my own hair beside the lamp, so the shadow on the wall has somebody to face.

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