Black and grey neo-traditional tattoo of a shaded rose inside a compass rose with N and S markings, on a forearm.

Rose and compass rose on a forearm

Neo-trad · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A shaded black and grey rose sits at the centre of a compass rose, with long pointed rays radiating outwards. Soft grey shading gives the rose and the leaves behind it depth, while bold black outlines define the compass points. Fine swirling flourishes and the letters N and S sit around the design against a plain skin tone.

Neo-trad Botanical Forearm Rose Compass Compass rose Leaves Swirl Letter Flourish

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mr Pryce wanted the rose in the middle of the compass, not tucked in the corner like a stamp, and he said so three times while I mixed the grey wash on the back step of the sign shop in Hallow Bridge. "Shade it so it looks like it's been out in the weather," he said. "She'll know it's the real one."

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The board was for the harbour wall, the first thing the Tuesday bus passed before it turned up the hill. Pryce had been a deckhand on the Morwenna until the winter she went down with two men aboard, and he had kept his own compass on the mantel ever since, never once using it. I put the N up top in black with a curl on its tail, and the long rays went out in cream and black like spikes on a gate. Behind the rose I worked in soft leaves, washing them thin so they'd read as shadow falling across the petals.

Nell Pryce stepped off the bus on the Thursday with a suitcase held in both hands. She stood at the wall a long while, then came over with her coat flapping and said the rose was in the wrong place. "The rays should point at the chapel," she said. "That's where he waited for us every Sunday with the lamp lit. He never once looked at the sea."

Her father wasn't there to argue. I looked at the board and saw what I had been painting all week: a rose at the heart of a map, and the map drawn around a place he had never once said he was going to.

I left the S at the bottom unfinished, a single loop of wet black, and Nell didn't ask me to finish it. She took the brush from my hand, dipped it in the grey, and added one leaf of her own at the edge, a little crooked, the way somebody would who had grown up under that wall.