Rose cluster tattoo on a forearm

Nell grew her roses in four galvanised pails bolted to the roof of the Patience, a working boat that carried coal from Brentford up to Banbury. The cuttings came off a churchyard wall at Ashby Lock, and every chimney on the cut breathed on them, so the petals took on that soft grey shading you see on old tin roofs. Her mother said they looked like someone had drawn them in pencil and then could not bear to rub them out. The biggest bloom sat nearest the chimney, and it was the one every bargeman on the cut wanted.

Tobias Greave offered her a sovereign for it the spring his sister was wed. Nell laughed and said a rose was not a thing you could take down off a hook. Then came the October flood, when the river rose a foot in a night and the bottom gate jammed fast with silt. Nell and Tobias worked the windlass until their palms bled, and the Patience lay tilted in the pound with the water shouldering her side. Nell tied the largest rose to the tiller so the crew could find the boat in the dark, and when the gate finally swung, the wind took that flower clean off its stem.

The petals went down the cut in a loose line, past the cottages and the mill, and the whole lock crew stood on the bank to watch them go. Tobias said it was a poor sort of payment. Nell said the river had taken its price, and she never bought another rose after that.