Black ink tattoo of a vertical column of small characters down the centre of a woman's bare back, photographed from behind.

Vertical characters down the spine

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman seen from behind, with dark hair gathered up and a floral robe draped over her shoulders. A vertical column of small, fine black characters runs down the centre of her back from the neck to the lower back. The image is muted and moody, with a sheathed sword standing against the wall on the right.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Marion,

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The last up train came through Tallow Junction at twenty past eleven, and it brought me a passenger I cannot make sense of. She stepped down onto the platform with a long bundle wrapped in dark cloth under one arm, a shawl of faded peonies pulled loosely about her shoulders. She asked for a ticket to Carrick Halt, which closed in 1958, and when I told her so she only nodded, as though I had confirmed something she already knew.

She stood by the lamp while the train pulled away, and I saw that the bundle was a sword in its scabbard, the lacquer worn pale where a hand had gripped it for years. I wrote the number in my ledger under the heading for odd loads, as Father taught us, and thought no more of it until the next morning. That was when I found a column of small characters chalked along the bench where she had sat, running straight down the slats like a timetable.

I copied them out before the cleaner could wipe them. There were eleven. Mr Dacre from the goods office read them over my shoulder and said they were names, not places, and that the last one was a word for a crossing made in the dark. He would say no more than that, and went off muttering about the 6.40.

I have been thinking since about what she was keeping in order, and whether a person can carry a list of names so she never loses their sequence. Tomorrow I will check the bench again. If the chalk is gone, I will know she has finished reading them.

Love, Hettie

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