Back of a woman with two traditional-style pin-up tattoos in red and grey, one with two swallows and one with an anchor, across the upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Twin seated pin-up figures with swallows on a back

Traditional · Back · Mixed · Photo

Two seated female figures in a vintage pin-up style sit on large red forms with grey swirling waves beneath them. A swallow flies near the left figure, and an anchor with a small tattoo-style emblem sits beside the right figure. The bold red fills and grey shading contrast with the bare skin of the upper back, and the tattoos are arranged symmetrically across the shoulder blades.

Traditional Neo-trad Back Woman Pin-up Swallow Anchor Wave Rose Heart

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, Mr Pryce finished Stan's back at the parlour on Commercial Road on Tuesday, and I have seen it, so you needn't brace yourself. Two ladies sit on great red hearts, one with a swallow lifting from her fingers, the other with an anchor tucked beside her like a dog that won't leave the step. Stan wanted them facing each other across his shoulder blades, but Pryce said the blades were too narrow, so they look back over their shoulders instead. Stan says that is how you know they are waiting.

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It was the swallow that undid him. Pryce told him a swallow is what a sailor gets for every thousand miles, or for every time he gets home, and Stan went quiet on the bench. His mother's kitchen window faces the Solent, and he hasn't stood in it since the Calliope sailed. He paid for the bird twice over, he said, and then bought the waves too, grey curls that run down under the hearts and into the anchor's flukes, so that the whole thing rocks like a boat in the harbour mouth.

Doris cried when she saw it and then made him stand in the yard so she could photograph it with the Brownie. She said the ladies looked like they were listening for a ship's bell. I told her they were listening for nothing, that Stan had asked for them to look calm, and she said that was what he always asked for and never got.

There is one square inch left on his back, between the nearer lady's elbow and the wave. Pryce says he keeps it clear on purpose. Stan says that's for whoever comes home last. Keep your own skin clean out there, Tom, and when you're back I'll bring the ink and find you a space of your own.