Black and grey realism tattoo of an open book, a rose, a patterned teacup and saucer and a pocket watch on the side of the torso.

Rose, book, teacup and pocket watch

Realism · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows an open book with a rose resting on its pages, a patterned teacup and saucer in the foreground, and an open pocket watch with a visible dial. The shading is smooth and detailed, with soft gradients on the petals, cup and watch casing and crisp linework on the book's text lines and the cup's ornate border. The image is entirely greyscale and the subjects are arranged across the frame with the rose at upper right and the cup at lower left.

Realism Ribs Book Rose Teacup Saucer Pocket watch Clock Open book

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Margaret had arrived at the village hall forty minutes early, which gave her time to rehearse what she would say to Tessa Lowe, who had once borrowed her copy of Jane Eyre in Year Nine and returned it with a ring of tea stained into the cover. The urn in the corner ticked as it heated. Someone had set out a tray of custard creams and a vase of cut roses from a garden on Harcourt Road, their petals already browning at the edges.

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Tessa came in at ten past seven, her coat still buttoned, and didn't look at the room at all. She looked at Margaret, then at the chipped cup Margaret had set on a saucer beside her handbag. "You kept it," she said. Margaret had. It was the cup from the staff room that Mr Pryce had thrown out the year the school closed, and she had fished it from the skip with cold hands and a stomach that refused to settle.

They talked about husbands and mortgages, about the fire door on the second floor that still stuck in wet weather. Then Tessa reached into her pocket and set down Mr Pryce's pocket watch, the one he had lost on the Tintern field trip and never found. Its hands had stopped at twenty to four. "I was going to take it to the police," Tessa said, "and then I thought, no, it belongs to whoever was nearest the bell."

Margaret wound it. It ticked, the hands moved, and across the hall the urn clicked off. She poured the tea, and the two of them sat with the old library book between them, its spine cracked open at the page where the lesson had ended, and for once neither of them needed to be the first to speak.