Black and grey traditional swallow tattoo on the back of a hand, with a small treble clef on a finger, beside a black wristwatch.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Swallow and treble clef on a hand

Traditional · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A swallow in flight sits on the back of the hand, drawn with bold outlines and solid grey and black shading. A small treble clef in dark ink is placed on one finger, and a further small mark is visible on the adjacent finger. The plain grey background keeps the focus on the hand, with a green sleeve and black wristwatch at the wrist.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The swallows are back under the canopy at Harrowgate Road, two of them, and Mr Pryce swears they are the same pair that nested there last year. I don't believe him, but I wrote their arrival in the station log anyway, between the late goods and the signal fault on Platform Two. You'd like the log now. I've started putting the weather in it, which nobody asked for.

The man with the piano comes through most mornings before the 7.12. He plays the upright that was left in the waiting room after the church hall closed, and he always stops halfway through the same bar, as if he has lost his place and is too proud to go back to the start. Last week the stationmaster asked him to keep it down. He nodded, closed the lid, and left a pencil on top of it, sharpened to a fine point. I have it in my drawer. I haven't known what to do with it.

On Thursday the Carlisle train was cancelled and he stayed on the bench until the evening, sketching in the margins of the old timetable while I counted the till. I made him tea in the chipped mug. When I took the timetable from him to pin it up, I found a swallow drawn in mid-dive across the Sunday services, wings folded back like a pair of hands, and at the end of the 7.12 line, a treble clef, curled neatly like a question nobody had yet asked.

The timetable is above my desk now. The 7.12 still goes at 7.12. But I catch myself humming that one bar, and I always stop where he stopped.

Love, Nell

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