Two small black fine line anchor tattoos, one on each wrist, shown in a warm vintage-toned photo.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two matching anchor tattoos on wrists

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows two anchor tattoos on the inner wrists, one larger on the lower wrist and a smaller one on the opposite wrist. The anchors are drawn in thin, dark ink with simple outlined linework and no shading. The warm, sepia-toned filter makes the ink look brownish, and the background includes a striped fabric edge.

Fine line Forearm Anchor Pair

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The Pavilion Ballroom in Saltcombe ran its last Saturday dance on the night the lifeboat came in a man short, and nobody in the hall pretended not to notice. I was working the cloakroom with a biro that wouldn't write on damp tickets, so I was the only one free to watch Win Pascoe cross the floor in her green frock.

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'Give us your pen,' she said. 'Mine's run dry.' I handed it over, and she drew a small anchor on the back of my wrist, neat as a rubber stamp. Then she took my other hand and drew a bigger one on hers, the lines wobbling when the band struck up a waltz and she laughed into my shoulder. 'Now whatever the tide does,' she said, 'we're both moored to the same bit of seabed.' I told her that was rubbish. She said it was the best rubbish in Devon.

The ink bled in the heat of the hall, so by midnight the anchors looked more like smudged bruises than anything a sailor would trust. Win's fiancé, Dennis, was out past the breakwater on the Eleanor Rose that week, and she kept glancing at the door as if he might walk through it in his oilskins. He didn't. The band packed up at eleven and the caretaker switched off the big chandelier one bulb at a time.

Forty years on, the ink on my wrist has gone the colour of weak tea. Win's went with her in the spring. Sometimes, when the afternoon sun comes low through the cloakroom window, the lines come up clear again, and I hold my arm out to the light like a girl asking for one more dance.