Small fine line black ink tattoo of an ornate sofa with scrolled arms on the shoulder, with a tiny dotted line above it.

Small ornate sofa on a shoulder

Fine line · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A small tattoo of an ornate sofa or armchair with curling scroll arms and a shaded base sits on the top of a shoulder. It is drawn in thin black linework with light hatching on the seat, and a faint dotted line rises above the backrest. The photo is taken close up at a slight angle against a pale background, with a patterned strap visible.

Fine line Shoulder Scroll Dotted line

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

In the village of Scarr Bottom nobody owned a sofa until Nan Hebden sent to Bradford for one. It came up the valley on a cart with a wheel that wobbled, and the men of the row stood about in their caps watching it come, saying nothing, because it was the sort of thing that needed silence.

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The road gave out at the chapel wall, so six of them carried it the last quarter mile on their shoulders, swearing quietly for the sake of the chapel. The scroll arms caught on every hedge. Old Tom Ashby said the thing weighed as much as a sick heifer, and Nan walked ahead with a lamp although it was noon, calling left, left, as though the sofa could hear her and might be persuaded.

For a month nobody sat on it. It stood in the front room under a sheet like a sleeping dog. Then the night the cage stuck at the Dunmore shaft, the women gathered in Nan's kitchen to wait, and when the room grew too cold for the kettle Nan lifted the sheet, patted the cushion and said, sit. Eli Crowther, who was twelve and had no business being there, sat down in his wet boots. The rest followed until the room was full of them, shoulder to shoulder, the lamp hissing, and the sofa held every one.

When the men came up at dawn, grey with dust, the cushions were still pressed in a row where people had sat. Nan never let anyone move the sofa after that. The arms wore pale over the years where hands gripped them going up and down the valley, and the children learned to read the old tracks of the village by the dents left in its seat.