Black and grey realism tattoo of a rose merged with a clock face with Roman numerals and gears, on the back of a hand.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Rose and clock face on the hand

Realism · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A rose sits across the back of a hand, with its petals wrapping around a clock face showing Roman numerals and a small hour hand. Toothed gears appear at the edges of the petals, and a further tattoo runs up the wrist and forearm above. The shading is smooth and highly detailed in grey and black, giving the rose and metal parts strong three-dimensional form against a dark background.

Realism Hand Rose Clock Roman numeral Gear

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The church clock at Hebden Lowe had been silent since the flood, and Mr Aske wanted it striking noon by Saturday, because his daughter had said she would not walk up the aisle until the bell told her she was allowed to. I was seventeen and had been sent up the tower ladder with a tin of oil, a file and a sack of rags that smelled of paraffin.

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The works were older than the roof and furred with a grey dust that came off on my fingers like soot off a grate. Halfway up the great wheel I found a tooth snapped clean, and beside it a rose pressed flat between two leaves of the parish register, its petals gone the colour of pencil lead. Someone had left it caught in the gears a long time ago, and I could not think who would put a flower inside a clock.

I cut a new tooth from a brass blank that Mr Aske kept in his drawer, filed it to the old pitch, and fitted it by candlelight while the rain ran down the louvres. By four in the morning the escapement ticked like a heart. I set the hands to a quarter to twelve and sat with my back against the bell frame, waiting.

On Saturday the bride was late. The whole village stood in the lych gate, and the clock seemed to hold its breath along with the rest of us. Then the hammer fell, once, twice, all the way to twelve, and she came round the lychgate on her father's arm with the rose pinned at her waist. I swear the last chime was still humming in the stone when she reached the rail.