Black and grey realism skull tattoo on an upper arm, framed by outlined roses, a compass star and a pocket watch.

Skull, rose and compass on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A shaded realistic human skull sits at the centre of the design, with grey tones on the cranium, eye sockets and teeth. Fine black outlines form roses with leaves, a compass star with an E label, and a pocket watch with Roman numerals behind and below the skull. The ink is almost entirely black and grey, with the outlined elements left lightly shaded against the skin.

Realism Botanical Upper arm Shoulder Skull Rose Leaves Compass Pocket watch Roman numeral

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The last waltz at the Marine Pavilion is called at a quarter to midnight, and you have never once been the one to call it. That is Mrs Pryce's job, with her brass whistle and her cardigan buttoned wrong. Tonight you stand by the cloakroom hatch with your father's pocket watch in your palm, its lid stiff, the Roman numerals worn to ghosts, and you count the minutes the way he taught you, by the second hand jerking past the twelve.

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The floor is full of couples who learned to dance in this room before you were born. A sailor with a bad knee steers a woman in green past the bandstand. Above it hangs the plaster skull the first proprietor commissioned in 1921, its teeth gone grey with sixty years of cigarette smoke, and beneath the cornice a compass rose painted in faded ochre still points north towards the Baltic timber ships that built this town. Your father used to say a dance hall was a ship with the lights on, and that nobody ever steered one by the stars anyway.

At eleven forty you walk the edge of the floor slowly, watch open, saying nothing. You pass the roses someone pinned to the rail for the Jubilee, dry now, shedding petals onto the sprung boards. You pass the bandleader, who winks and mouths the word one more. You do not stop. Time goes in one direction only, and the watch has never once asked your permission.

When the band strikes up the final number, you set the watch face up on the ledge beside the coat check, hands at a quarter to twelve. Then you walk out onto the floor and ask the nearest stranger to dance, because the tune is slow, the sea is loud under the boards, and for three minutes there is still a great deal of room left.