Close view of a small black lettered tattoo reading HE>I on the upper shoulder near the collarbone.

Small HE>I lettering near the shoulder

Lettering · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a small tattoo reading HE>I, set in plain capital letters with a right-pointing arrow-like mark between the E and the I. The ink is dark, crisp and even, in solid black lines. The skin is warm-toned and softly lit against a plain grey wall, with the tattoo placed just off the collarbone.

Lettering Shoulder Text Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The gantry light over Digbeth High Street buzzed like a trapped wasp, and I had my brush loaded with gold leaf at quarter past two, which is no hour for gold leaf. Mrs Pryce had waited up for me in the doorway of the old bakery. She wanted the fascia touched up before the new tenants came, and she wanted the letters exactly as her husband had painted them in 1978.

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Eddie Pryce had been a sign-writer too, and a terrible one by his own cheerful account. He had lettered the shop's name in a hurry: HE>I. When I unscrewed the old board to check the back, I found his pencil sketch, a small arrow between the E and the I, and beneath it, in careful capitals, 'he is greater than I. Keep the arrow, Joan. Don't let them tidy it.'

So I didn't tidy it. I laid the gold across the crossbar of the E and gilded the chevron until it caught the streetlamp. I asked her why the arrow pointed towards the canal rather than the bus stop. She said Eddie had always liked to be looking out past whatever was his, and that the arrow was a joke he only ever told to people he trusted.

When I finished, Joan stood in the road with her coat over her nightdress and read the word aloud, slowly, as if it were a sum that had finally come out right. Then she went inside and switched off the light. The sign kept glowing for a while without her, pointing down the wet street towards the water.