Back of two hands with a grey shaded lotus on one and a coloured traditional rose on the other, plus small finger tattoos spelling DOLL and FACE.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Rose and lotus hand tattoos with finger lettering

Traditional · Hand · Mixed · Photo

The photograph shows the backs of two hands. The left hand has a greyscale shaded lotus flower, and the right has a red traditional rose with dark green leaves. Both hands carry small finger tattoos: letters spelling DOLL and FACE, with an anchor, skull, bow, diamond, crown, heart and cupcake, drawn in bold black outline.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth, the galley has gone quiet at last, so I have the kettle on and the hatch propped open with a tin of Bovril. You will not believe what Cass did on the Tuesday crossing. She came down the steps with both hands wrapped in brown paper and said she had lost a bet to a stoker from Birkenhead, and the forfeit was ink. I thought she meant a pen. She meant a needle, and a man called Dinny with a shop under the arcade at Seacombe, who I am told is not to be trusted with a kettle, let alone a hand.

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When she unwrapped them, the left had a lotus opening over the knuckles, grey as a February sea, shaded so deep you could see the seed heads inside. The right had a red rose with leaves like wet holly. Then the fingers: D, O, L, L down one hand and F, A, C, E down the other, with an anchor, a skull, a bow, a diamond, a crown, a heart and a little cupcake squeezed in where a ring would go. She said the stoker had asked for SAILOR and she had made him settle for something he could only read with his head on one side.

The bet was the best of it. Dinny had been so pleased with himself that he drew the letters the wrong way round on the first hand, and Cass caught it before the needle touched, so he had to redo the whole row for nothing. The stoker, who had put five shillings on the arcade clock stopping at noon, paid up and then spent the rest of the night trying to read her knuckles aloud. He still gets it wrong. She says that is the point.

She held the two hands up to the porthole when we came in past the Pier Head, and the rose went red against the dark water while the lotus sat quiet beside it. The deckhands all came to look. Nobody said a word for a while. Then Cass wiggled her fingers at the cupcake and asked me whether I thought the crown was too much. I told her it was exactly enough. Write soon, and tell Mam I have not burned anything this week.

Your loving sister, Nell

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