Two swallows on the upper back
Traditional · Back · Colour · Photo
A woman with shoulder-length brown hair is photographed from behind, wearing a loose white knit top with a wide scoop neckline. Two swallows in flight sit across her upper back, one facing left and one facing right, with bold black outlines and solid fills in red, green, yellow and blue. The background is a bright, softly blurred waterfront with a railing chain and trees.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
Old Hal Pearce would not let anyone touch the wheelhouse paint until the swallows had settled under the eaves, so for six weeks the Sally Rose sat in Whitby harbour with her brushes dry and her skipper sulking on the quay.
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There were two of them that summer, red throats and forked tails, and they took turns darting out over the grey water and back again. Hal's daughter Nell said one was the lad who had gone to Canada and never written, and the other was the one who stayed. Hal said that was nonsense. Birds don't carry the names of men, he said, but he took his tea at the window every morning all the same.
On the last Thursday of August the wind backed round to the north and the Sally Rose went out with her new hull paint still tacky. She came back on the Saturday, and Nell was on the pier before the lines were fast. The swallows were gone. Hal stepped ashore with a wet canvas bundle under one arm and a single blue feather stuck to the peak of his cap.
'They'll be over the Sahara by now,' he said. 'Turning round on the wing like they forgot something.' He pressed the feather into her palm, climbed back aboard, and began to paint, one long stroke at a time, because a boat that has come home should look as if it means to stay.
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