Black and grey realism tattoo of a long-haired woman with a clown nose and tear, with comedy and tragedy masks and a pointe shoe, on the upper arm with script lettering below.

Woman with theatre masks and script on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A woman with long, flowing hair is shown in a portrait style, wiping away a tear with one hand and wearing a red clown nose. Below her, a comedy and a tragedy mask and a pointe shoe sit beside a line of cursive script. The piece uses soft grey shading and fine hair linework on the upper arm, with the lettering set against bare skin.

Realism Upper arm Woman Portrait Long hair Tear Script Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The red nose was still warm from the dressing-room lamp when Bea pressed it into my palm and told me to keep it safe for Thursday. She had cried through the last act of the tragedy, then swapped her tear-streaked face for a grin and a squeak in the comedy, and the audience at the Pavilion in Merrow Bay laughed at the exact moment she was supposed to be dying.

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Her agent had promised her Medea. Instead the company gave her the Nurse in the Greek and the Widow Scrump in the panto, and she took both without complaint, which is how I knew she was furious. Bea never complained. She stopped eating her sandwiches in the wings and started rehearsing her death scene alone in the empty stalls, pointe shoes laced tight, satin darkening at the toes, while the cleaners pushed their mops past her as though she were a draught they had long since stopped noticing.

On Thursday the director, a man called Lionel Price who wore cravats in August, cut her Medea monologue to make room for a tap number. I found her afterwards on the fire-door step with the nose on her knee. "Comedy is only tragedy that hasn't happened yet," she said. "I read it on a fridge magnet." Then she asked if I would help her write to the board, and I said yes before she finished the sentence.

We wrote it on the back of a programme. She signed it Bea, crossed that out, and signed her full name, the way you sign for a parcel you never ordered. The nose went back in my pocket. I still have it, and on quiet afternoons I squeeze it just to hear the small, stubborn honk.