Black and white photo of a lettering tattoo reading 'You see, but you do not observe' in typewriter-style type on a person's upper back.

Typewriter quote across a shoulder blade

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The photo shows the upper back of a person wearing a loose strappy top, with their face out of frame. The tattoo is two lines of typewriter-style text: 'You see,' in darker ink above a fainter line reading 'but you do not observe'. The lettering is fine and even, with soft grey shading, and the photo is in black and white with the text placed across the shoulder blade.

Lettering Fine line Back Quote Word Typewriter font Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mr Garside had typed the same line four times before Nell reached over and released the carriage. The Remington in the back office of the Humber Steam Packet was older than both of them, and its e's came out fainter every year, so that any sentence with 'see' in it looked as if two people had written it and disagreed.

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He was a detective's man, or said he was, having read every penny adventure in the newsagent's window and quoted them at the dock clerks until they threw biscuits at him. Nell had worked the typewriter since the spring. She had learned that he noticed nothing about the men who came in with their wages wrapped in newspaper, and everything about the rain on the sill. 'You see,' he said, tapping his pipe into a saucer, 'but you do not observe. The difference, Miss Ashby, is the whole of my trade.'

On Friday a deckhand named Tully came in with a cut hand and a story about a crate of tinned peaches gone missing from the Danzig boat. Garside listened with his eyes shut. Nell watched the man's cuff, which was new, and his boots, which were a size too big and had plainly been borrowed from someone taller. She said nothing until the door had closed behind him.

'He's not the thief,' she said. 'The thief is the one who lent him the boots.' Garside opened his eyes and looked at her properly, the way he looked at the rain. 'Then type that,' he said. 'Slowly. Let the ribbon catch every letter.'