Pencil drawing of a winged pocket watch with Roman numerals, ribbons and ornate scrollwork, shaded in greys on paper.

Winged clock with ribbons design

Black and grey · Flash

A detailed pencil drawing of a pocket watch framed by two spread wings, with a banner across the top and ribbons curving down each side. The clock face shows Roman numerals and a chain, and the ornate scrollwork below is shaded with fine hatching and soft grey tones. The design is drawn in black and grey on a pale sheet with a centred composition.

Wing Clock Pocket watch Roman numeral Ribbon Banner Chain Scrollwork

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The coal bunker had been empty since Tuesday, so Harold Vine wound the pocket watch inside his coat instead of in his caravan, sitting on an upturned crate in the big top while the canvas sagged overhead like a wet sheet. Ada watched him from the rigging. He had been ringmaster when the Pilcher Travelling Show still filled a field of forty wagons, and he still wore the red frock coat, though the braid had gone green at the cuffs.

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'Chain's gone,' he said, not looking up. 'Fifty years on that bow, and it snapped at Skegness the week before the bank took the animals.' He held the watch out on his palm, the links dangling like a cut bridle. Ada had the wings in her locker, the ones her mother stitched from swan feathers for the flying act, and the silver ribbons that once streamed from the banner over the ring. She had told herself she would sell them in the spring. She climbed down instead and knotted a length of brass wire from the trapeze rigging through the bow.

By morning the frost had silvered the tarpaulins and the ribbons on the banner stood stiff. Harold hung the watch from the centre pole, face out towards the empty benches, and the numerals caught the grey light. Ten past four, or perhaps ten to. Nobody had sold a ticket in eleven weeks.

Ada carried the wings out of the stock wagon over one arm. 'Let them see them,' Harold said. 'They'll not pay, but they'll look.' She fitted the harness across his shoulders with the same clasps she had used on her own, and he stood beneath the pole with the watch swinging, and for a moment the whole ruined top seemed to be waiting for the band to strike up.