Colour traditional tattoo of a red heart with a dagger, an AS IF banner, red flowers and green leaves on a leg.

Traditional heart with dagger and AS IF banner

Traditional · Calf · Colour · Photo

A traditional-style tattoo shows a red heart with a dark shaded edge, outlined in gold with dark dots, pierced by a brown-handled dagger. A banner reading AS IF crosses the heart, with red flowers, green leaves and red drips below. Bold black outlines and flat, saturated fills give it a classic look, and the design sits centred on the skin with a plain fabric background.

Traditional Calf Heart Dagger Banner Flower Leaves Drip Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dad sold the cutter in March, so by May the harbour wall was the only place Ruth and I could argue without the whole of Porthkerris listening. The fish sheds smelt of diesel whatever the weather. Tom Vosper had come home from two seasons on the Dover boats with a new jacket, a tin of shag and a plan to take me to Lisbon before the summer was out. I told him he'd be back on the bins by August.

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He didn't argue. He worked a rusted nail out of the iron bollard, turned it over in his fingers, then drove the point back into the wood of the old mooring post, hard, the way you'd pin a notice to a board. If you care for me, he said, say something true. I said, as if. He grinned like I'd handed him a prize, and I should have known then that he had only heard the half of it he wanted.

He went on the Tuesday tide. Lisbon was a postcard in August, a postmark in October with no return address, then nothing at all. The next spring a wooden crate came up on the lorry from Plymouth, addressed to me in his square capitals. Inside was one red cork float and a folded sheet with a heart drawn on it, pierced through with a dagger. No letter. Mum said it was the sort of thing a man sends when he can't find the words.

I hammered the nail back into the post myself that week, and I still walk past it on the way to the shed. Some mornings the high tide reaches the foot of the post and the rust runs down the wood in a thin red line, as if something has been dripping there all winter. I tell myself it's only rust. I have never once said as if to it.