Neo-traditional colour tattoo of a green and cream VW camper van in an ornate grey frame with red hibiscus flowers on the upper arm.

VW camper van and hibiscus on upper arm

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A green and cream Volkswagen camper van, seen from the front, sits inside an ornate grey scrollwork frame edged with a row of silver beads. Two large red hibiscus flowers spill out from behind the frame on the left and lower right. The van is shaded with soft tonal greys and the frame has bold outlines, with colour dominating the design.

Neo-trad Upper arm Hibiscus Flower Scrollwork Frame Bead

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The van came up Fore Street on a Tuesday, its engine knocking like a man at a locked door, and Ray leaned out of the window grinning with a plant in a biscuit tin across his knees. 'Cost me two bottles of gin and a lie about my birthday,' he said. The hibiscus was a cutting from a sailor's cabin in Lisbon, wrapped in wet newspaper, its flowers the red of a pillar box left out in the rain.

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Mother had kept the mirror in the hall since before the war, a heavy oval thing with scrollwork going soft at the corners and a string of silver beads glued round its rim by a great-aunt who thought it would make it look grand. Ray said the van was the only thing in Cornwall fit to hang it in front of. He had bought it in a field outside Bodmin from a widow who wanted it gone by Friday, and he had painted the front panel himself, a green so pale it looked like the sea seen through a bottle.

We spent the afternoon bolting the mirror to the dashboard, which was a daft idea and Ray knew it, and the beads rattled against the windscreen every time we crossed the cobbles. Mother stood at the kerb with her arms folded and said nothing, which from her was a blessing. By evening the van smelled of wet paper and petrol, and the hibiscus sat in a jam jar on the passenger seat with one bloom already open.

When Ray drove off towards Penzance the next morning, I stood in the road and watched the frame flash in the sun, the beads catching the light like a necklace going up a long hill. Mother said that plant would never flower through a Cornish winter. I told her it already had, and went in to find a second jar.