Black and grey realism tattoo of two open pocket watches with chains and Roman numeral dials, with script names on the faces, on a calf.

Two pocket watches with chains on a lower leg

Realism · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

Two open pocket watches hang from chains, one overlapping the other, with Roman numerals, hands and small subdials visible on each face. The linework is fine and the shading is smooth, with strong highlights on the metal casings and soft shadows that give depth. The image is in black and grey ink and is framed closely on the lower leg.

Realism Calf Pocket watch Clock Chain Roman numeral Script Name

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Mr Hollis, the eight-fifteen from Crewe is running four minutes late again, and the stationmaster has taken to blaming the watches rather than the coal. I have enclosed the pair you left on my bench in March. The gold has been polished back to its proper colour, and I have set both to Greenwich, which I know you will not thank me for, since you always said a train keeps its own time and so must a man. The smaller dial on the left still sticks at the quarter past, so I have left it alone. Your daughter asked me to say that the hinge was the thing she wanted fixed, because it had a sound like a door in a house where nobody lives any more.

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I asked the boy who sweeps the platform whether he had seen you at the junction on Thursday. He said a man in a grey coat had stood under the clock for an hour and never once looked up at it, only down at his own chain, turning the watch over and over as if checking that it was still there. I did not tell him that I knew the feeling. I have kept your name engraved on the back of the second case, though I am not sure it is still the right name to put there.

If you come through in the autumn, the kettle will be on and the bench will be clear. Bring the other one, whichever it is, and we will see whether the two of them can agree about the time. They never could, you told me once, and I have come to think that was the whole point of owning two.

Yours, with the regulator well oiled, Tom Fenwick