Close photograph of a black ink word tattoo reading Thnks in simple hand-drawn lettering on the inner wrist.

Thnks lettering on an inner wrist

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close view of an inner wrist with the word Thnks tattooed in black ink. The letters have even, monoline strokes with a slightly uneven, hand-drawn character, and the tattoo sits centred across the wrist crease. The skin is pale and evenly lit against a grey and black striped mat in the background.

Lettering Forearm Word Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rate was a penny a letter, and vowels were the first thing people tried to save. Mrs Ogilvie came in on a wet Tuesday with her hat dripping onto my counter and a form she had filled in twice, crossing out a word each time as though it might cost her more the second go. She wanted to send four words to the lifeboat coxswain at Porthkerris. I counted them off on my fingers. Thanks for the boy. She pushed the pencil back at me and said it was too dear.

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I told her the vowels were free if she let me choose the spelling. Telegraph boys in my day had their own grammar, and I had been sending messages that looked like gravel for eleven years. I wrote THNKS FOR THE BOY and counted it as five. She asked whether the coxswain would understand. I said men who pull other men out of a black sea understand a great deal with very few letters.

The boy was her grandson, Alfie, who had gone out on the Cormorant in January on a dare and been hauled back by a crew who did not stop to ask whose fault it was. Mrs Ogilvie read the wire back to me twice, lips moving on the consonants, then asked me to send it at once before she lost her nerve about the cost.

Three days later a reply came back in the coxswain's own hand, addressed to the counter and not to her. It said only: NO TROUBLE. TELL ALFIE THE SEA IS SHORT OF VOWELS TOO. Mrs Ogilvie came in to collect it and paid for every letter of my wire without a word. I have kept her form in my drawer ever since, the crossed-out words still showing under the ink.