Black and grey treble clef tattoo with small musical notes trailing up and to the right, placed on the shoulder near the collarbone.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Treble clef and music notes on a shoulder

Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A bold, solid black treble clef sits on the skin with a line of small music notes rising diagonally from its upper curl toward the top right. The clef has heavy, filled linework with soft shading, while the notes are simpler and lighter. The image is a black and white close-up with the shoulder and collarbone area filling the frame and a fragment of hair at the top edge.

Shoulder Treble clef Music note Music

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The harmonium in the chapel above Porthgwidden had been silent since the winter the ferry stopped, and Mr Lusk swore he would not touch it until the last of the herring boats had gone out. I went up with my tuning fork in my coat pocket anyway, because nobody else on the quay could tell a flat G from a sigh.

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Inside, the air smelt of salt and damp hymn books. Someone had left the bellows open, and mice had nested in the reeds. I worked from the bottom of the keyboard upwards, the way my father taught me, listening for the beat that slows as two strings come true. Mr Lusk's grandson had carved a fat, looping hook with a dot at its heart into the lid years ago, and every time I struck middle C it seemed to pull the notes after it.

By the third hour the sea was loud through the open door and the reeds had begun to answer. I played the old tune the fishermen's wives used to sing for the boats, badly at first, then the way it was meant to go. A gull sat on the sill and listened. When I looked up, the low sun had thrown a line of small dark shapes across the whitewash, rising like swifts off the water.

Mr Lusk paid me in mackerel and a shilling he had kept since decimalisation. 'It sounds like something escaping,' he said. 'Good,' I told him. 'Let it.' I left the lid open so the notes could find their own way down the hill to the harbour.