Fine line black anchor tattoos on two fingers of a hand, with a brass ring worn on the middle finger.

Two small anchors on fingers

Fine line · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

Two small black anchor tattoos sit on the fingers of a hand resting against a forearm. The anchors have thin, even outlines with simple arms, a curled top and a ring at the shank, and are shown in solid black ink with no shading. The hand is wearing brass rings and a white top is visible in the background, with a plain light backdrop.

Fine line Hand Anchor

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mr Fenwick had the ring-toss stall at the back of the fair, where the generator fumes drifted over the candyfloss and nobody bought anything before ten. He taught me the knots on the first night we met, a bowline and a clove hitch, because a fairground stall needs its canvas tied down as hard as any ship. He said the sea was the only honest thing left, because it never pretended to be anything but wet and cold.

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We were pulling out of Sheffield when the storm came. The big top bellied like a sail and the dodgem poles bent double. Fenwick stood on the wagon step with a torch and shouted that the anchor had to go down, though we had no anchor, only a rusted tent peg as long as my forearm. I hammered it in with a spanner while he held the guy rope, and the wind snatched his cap away and rain came sideways through the gap in the awning.

Morning found the fair sodden and the ring-toss still standing. Fenwick didn't say much. He took a tin of drawing pins and a bottle of black ink from his coat pocket, and he pricked two small anchors onto my fingers, one on each of the first two, just so we would both remember we had held. The lines sat dark and even, a little crooked where the rain had got into the ink.

We packed up that afternoon and went north. Every time the wagon lurched on a bad road, I looked down at the two anchors and thought of the peg, sinking into wet ground that had no business holding anything at all.