Pencil drawing of a tattoo design showing a woman framed by two birds, roses and leaves in a neo-traditional style.

Woman portrait with birds and roses

Neo-trad · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing of a woman with curled hair, pearl earrings and a brooch, set within an oval frame. Two birds perch on the frame and two large roses with leaves fill the lower part of the composition. The linework is fine and the shading is soft and graded, in black and grey only.

Neo-trad Botanical Woman Portrait Bird Rose Leaves Frame Pearl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Vane came into the back room of Leeson's on a wet Thursday with a brooch wrapped in a handkerchief, and I was the one told to weigh it. I was nineteen and had been warned to keep my eyes on the scales. The brooch was dark garnet in worn silver, with a pearl drop that swung when I set it down. She said her husband had bought it in Bath the year before the war, and that he had sent her a letter every week after he shipped out, each one with a pressed rose tucked inside, until the letters stopped in the spring.

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I offered four pounds. She asked whether I thought it was worth more than that. I said the scales said four pounds, and she laughed and said that was the most honest thing anyone had told her since March. Then she asked if I could keep it for a week, and she would come back with the money. She came every Thursday after that, and each time she stood at the counter and talked about the sparrows on the ledge outside, and the florist on the corner who kept giving her roses she could not afford to pay for.

On the twelfth Thursday she came in with the money counted out in a neat stack and set it beside the handkerchief. I pushed it back across the counter. Mr Leeson had gone home early and the shop was mine to decide. I wrapped the brooch again and put it in her gloved hand.

She went out into the rain, and I watched her through the window, the pearl drop still tapping softly against the silver at her collar where she had pinned it on.