Ship in a heart with roses flash design
Traditional · Black and grey · Flash
A black outline drawing of a heart containing a sailing ship on swirling waves, framed by three roses with leaves. The words BEYOND THE SEA curve along the upper right edge of the heart. The linework is bold and even, with light pink wash on the roses and heart on a tan paper background, and a partly visible rope and anchor design sits in the top right corner.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
The lift at Brayford House had been broken since Tuesday, so Ruth Mallin counted the stairs the way Len used to count watches at sea. Four flights, the fire door that stuck, then the last steps with her hand on the rail. Tomasz from flat 9 met her on the landing with the post. "Council, and one from Grimsby," he said.
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Forty years Len had worked the tankers out of Immingham, and from every port he sent her a postcard with roses printed on the front and one line on the back in capitals, because his handwriting looked like rigging in a gale. BEYOND THE SEA, the year the boy was born. She had pinned it to the fridge, where it still hung, curled at the corners.
The Grimsby envelope held a newspaper clipping, not a letter. The Ardent Lass had come into the harbour that morning, and the photograph showed men in orange throwing dock lines ashore. Len's name was in the caption among the crew who brought her in, though he had been dead four years. Someone had made a mistake, or someone had remembered him, and Ruth could not decide which would be kinder.
She went to the window with the clipping and watched the ship turn slowly in the grey water, sails furled like folded hands. Then she filled the kettle, took down two mugs, and left one upside down on the drainer where it would wait for him.
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