Black and grey realism tattoo of a star under peeling skin, filled with words such as friendship, freedom and love, on a shoulder and upper arm.

Torn skin star with virtue words on upper arm

Realism · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A black and white photograph of a shoulder and upper arm, with a tattoo of a star shape where the skin appears to be peeling back to reveal words beneath. The words, including friendship, freedom, family, love, tolerance and integrity, are set in a serif typeface and partly cut off by the torn edges. Soft shading gives the skin a three-dimensional, lifelike texture, and a small plant sprig sits at the top left of the shoulder against a white vest.

Realism Lettering Shoulder Upper arm Star Torn skin Freedom Family Love Word

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mr Pargeter wanted the back wall of the Bethel chapel stripped to the brick, because the council had sold the lease to a man who wanted flats, and the old plaster was coming away in sheets like sunburnt skin. I was nineteen and paid by the hour, so I didn't ask why anyone would pay to strip a wall nobody could see from the street.

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Under the third coat, where the lath had rotted, someone had painted a great star in red ochre and lettered it with words in a Roman hand: FRIENDSHIP, FREEDOM, FAMILY, LOVE, TOLERANCE, INTEGRITY. Half the letters had flaked away with the plaster, and the rest I could barely read by the torch Pargeter held in his teeth. Mrs Gedge, who swept the pews, said a Sunday school teacher called Harriet Lound had painted it the year of the dock strike, believing a wall could keep what men were too frightened to say out loud.

The foreman wanted the lot gone by Friday. I argued, and for once I won, because Pargeter took off his cap and stood in front of the star like a man at a graveside. We skimmed it with lime and let the words show through faintly, a ghost under the new surface. The developer never noticed, and the flats went up with board over everything.

Years later I walked past with my granddaughter, who pointed at the rough patch on the wall of the car park and asked what the scratches were. I told her it was a star, and that under it were words worth keeping. She asked which words. I said I'd only got the middle letters right, and I'd been trying to fill in the rest ever since.