Black and grey photograph of a small, simple anchor tattoo on the inner wrist or forearm.

Small anchor on the wrist

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small, simple anchor outline in solid black ink sits on pale skin, with the shank and crossbar meeting a ring at the top and the flukes curving at the base. The linework is even and bold rather than shaded, with no added detail. The photograph is black and white and framed with a plain light border, with the tattoo placed near the centre.

Forearm Anchor

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, the fire's only good for the first hour, and the lamps on Harbour Row will not be lit again until somebody pays the ferryman. You want the anchor story? Everybody wants the anchor story. Old Tobin Vane kept a pawnshop under the arches by the gasworks, and he had one rule: nothing went back out the door without a price written in chalk on the slate. A woman came in one wet Tuesday with a brass ring in her fist, no bigger than a wedding band, and asked him what it was worth. He turned it over twice and said, It's worth the rope it's tied to, and she laughed like a gull and left it on the counter.

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That ring hung on a hook behind the till for eleven years. Nobody bought it. Tobin used to say it was the only honest thing in the shop, because it knew exactly what it was for and never once pretended otherwise. Boys came in with stolen radios and went out with sixpences. Sailors came in sober and went out drunk. The ring just hung there, patient as a bollard, waiting for something heavy enough to hold.

And then the flood came up Harbour Row and the shop filled to the shelves, and Tobin, up on the counter with his trousers rolled, finally reached for that ring to see whether it was brass or only gilt. It was brass. And clipped to the hook beside it, where he had never once seen it, was a short length of tarred line with a little iron anchor knotted on the end, the same shape as the ring's own old shadow. He stood in the cold water a long while, thinking about the woman, and then he wrote a price on the slate in chalk, and the price was the ferry fare home for two.