Woman seen from behind with a small black lettering quote tattoo across the lower back, above the waistband of black trousers.

Small lettering quote on lower back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman photographed from behind on a city street, wearing a lavender cropped jacket with an open back and black trousers. A small block of black lettering runs across her lower back, just above the waistband, in a fine serif typeface. The image is in colour, with a soft blurred background and the tattoo sitting near the centre of the frame.

Lettering Back Quote Text Woman Jacket

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Hollis had set type for thirty-one years and could read a line of lead backwards faster than most men could read a newspaper the right way round. The forme for the Harrowgate chapbook sat on the stone under the north window, eleven lines of a quotation nobody had asked him to verify, and the foreman wanted it locked up by Thursday. He ran his thumb along the sorts, feeling for nicks in the serifs, the way his father had taught him.

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The trouble came on the fourth line. Someone in the copy room had typed the word lantern with a double n, and the proof had gone through unread. Hollis could have let it pass. Nobody in Harrowgate read chapbooks closely enough to notice. But the rain had been drumming on the skylight since dawn and the gas lamp kept guttering, and he found he could not send a line out with a fault in it, not one that had passed through his own hands.

He pulled the line apart letter by letter, dropping each piece into the case with a small click, until the bench looked like a scatter of seeds. Then he set it again, slowly, checking every sort against the copy, his lips moving as he counted the spaces. By the time the bell in the market hall struck six, the line stood true, and the wet hush of the square came through the open door as the stallholders dragged their tarpaulins over the cabbages for the night.

When the chapbook came back from the binder a fortnight later, he turned to the page without meaning to. The line was right. Nobody else would ever see the difference, and he found that was enough. He slipped the spare proof into his coat, pulled the gate shut behind him, and walked home through the puddles with the quotation still running in his head, one fine serif at a time.