Pencil drawing of a realistically shaded rose and a pocket watch with Roman numerals, with leaves and swirling flourishes, shown as a tattoo design with no body part visible.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Rose and pocket watch pencil design

Realism · Black and grey · Flash

The drawing shows a shaded rose in full bloom on the left and an open pocket watch with a chain and ornate bow on the right, with Roman numerals around the dial. Soft pencil shading creates volume in the petals and watch case, and decorative leaves and curling flourishes fill the background. The image is black and grey throughout on a pale background.

Realism Rose Pocket watch Clock Roman numeral Leaves Flourishes Chain

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The clock on the bench has stopped again, the one your grandfather wound every Sunday, and I have not had the heart to open the case. Mr Ashby says the mainspring has gone soft with age and that a part from Clerkenwell will take a month, so I have told him to wait. You will say I am being sentimental, and you will be right, but there is a rose pressed inside the back cover that you put there the summer you left, and I would rather it stayed where it is.

The chain you asked about is still in the drawer. I polished the bow with a rag and a little jeweller's rouge until the Roman numerals came up sharp again, and the hands, though still, sit exactly where you set them: twenty past eleven on a Tuesday. I suppose that is the hour you walked out of the shop with your bag over your shoulder, and I suppose I have been too stubborn to let it move on.

Mr Ashby came in this morning with a pocket watch for repair, a gold one with a dented case, and asked whether I could make it keep time for a wedding. I said time keeps itself, that is the whole trouble with it. He laughed and said the bride wanted it running when she walked up the aisle, so I wound it, set it to the second, and sent it off with the florist's boy wrapped in tissue.

I am going to open the case on Sunday. If the spring is broken I will find another, and if it is only dust I will blow it out and hear it tick. Write if you are coming home. I will leave the back door on the latch.

Yours, as ever, Tom