Your Father Sends His Love (8 page)

The bell rings, last-orders-like, as she enters. Two men behind a scrubbed chrome counter, arms like advertisements, play cards for matchsticks. The turn of the next
card determines who will rise and greet Maria. The card falls and the thinner of the two – neatly bearded, ear-ringed, a Hawaiian shirt over the tattoos – rises from his chair.

‘Can I help?' he says.

‘I hope so,' she says. ‘I was wondering. Do I need an appointment? Or can you fit me in now?'

‘That all depends,' he says. ‘Depends entirely on what you want.'

‘I want wings,' she says. ‘I want a pair of wings on my back, just here.'

With her thumb, she points to her shoulder blade and catches her reflection in the mirrored walls; posed, her thumb out, like hitching a lift, disastrous camping holiday, Scotland, 1991.

‘Wings?' he says.

‘Yes,' she says. ‘Wings.'

This is how she has imagined it:

Tattooist
: Listen, lady –
the tattooist's voice is American, Deep South, Alabama perhaps
– wings are a lot a ink. You can't have 'em small, can you, Hutch?

The other tattooist shakes his head and sucks on a straw spiked into a Big Gulp cup.

Maria
: I'm aware of that –
her speaking voice has
become icy British, just at the public-school end of Received Pronunciation
– I've done my research. Can I see your designs, please?

Tattooist
: We do about fifteen different kinds a wing. Which kind were you thinking? You have a picture or something?

Maria
: No. I'd just like to see the designs, please.

Tattooist
: No picture?

Maria
: Just show me the wings.

Tattooist
: I ain't showing you nothing, lady.

Maria
: I have money—

Tattooist
: It ain't about the money, lady. Same thing happened to a buddy a mine. This stuck-up chick comes into his parlour, she hands over her black Amex card and he inks her. Month later she's suing him for taking advantage of her
weakened psychological state
. You see what I'm saying?

Maria bristles at the grammatical confusion.

Maria
: It's my sister's birthday. My sister, Gwen. She would have been forty today –
Maria takes two thousand pounds from her handbag and places it on the counter. It is a paper-bound brick like those used in exchange for kidnapped children –
this is important.

The tattooist says nothing and takes out a large port-folio from under the desk
,
stops on a page and turns it to face Maria. The page is full of wings. He points his finger
at a design in the bottom right-hand corner. It is hand-drawn, beautiful; two small wings just as she imagined them.

Tattooist
: They're the only ones I'll ink. Not too big, not too detailed, fine for when you want them removed.

Maria
: I'm never going to have them removed –
she puts her hand over the image, strokes the design
– they're perfect. Just perfect.

It is nothing like she imagined. There are over sixty different pairs of wings in the portfolio and the tattooist is all too helpful in picking out a design. Many come with a little background, a summary of how long they take to ink, whether he feels it is a good design for her. It reminds her of looking at carpet swatches and kitchen counter tops she couldn't afford; salesmen pitching the longevity, the luxury of their product. Like those men, the tattooist repeats that
at the end of the day
the choice is hers. She sees so many pairs inked on so many backs she develops a kind of wing blindness. They blur and flounder, seem ready to stretch and flap away.

By the turn of the fifth page, she understands that no one will tell her no. No one is going to find her mental health wanting, refuse her payment, finally ask for someone else's permission. Who would be able to grant such
permission, anyway? Would there need to be a consensus of friends and family as a safeguard against such action? Or references, perhaps? Would she be forced to forge her husband's signature? In his handwriting state: I have been married to Maria Carlton for sixteen years and I can confirm that she has always wanted and admired tattoos?

Maria momentarily notices herself in the mirrors: the stiffness of her clothes, the age-appropriate hairstyle, the messy casualness of a working mother, the redness around her eyes.

‘My sister died,' she says as he points to a pair of wings that cover the entirety of a man's back. ‘It's her birthday today.'

‘A tattoo's a good way to remember someone,' he says. ‘The earliest tattoos were for remembrance, you know?'

He sticks out his forearm and in amongst the swirls and curlicues are a man's name, a date of birth and a date of death, roses like bindweed surrounding the lettering.

‘She said, Gwen that is, my younger sister, she said that when she was forty we'd both get tattoos. Both of us,' Maria says as the tattooist turns the page again. ‘So, here I am. Alone, but not, if you see what I'm saying.'

‘Yes. So you are,' he says, and turns the portfolio fully to Maria.

‘These,' he says tapping the bottom right of the page. ‘These ones.'

It is a pencil-drawn image on tracing paper, thin and brittle grey. The wings are delicate and subtle; spindly lines, slightly crooked, suggestive rather than fully downed and feathered: still able to pinch at her shoulder blades though, still able to beat and lift her into the night air.

‘What do you think?' he says.

‘Gwen would have loved them.'

‘Gwen doesn't have to live with them,' he says. He smiles and they share a small laugh; a moment's warmth and understanding.

‘I want them,' she says. ‘They're perfect.'

‘I'm glad,' he says. ‘So, okay. Just a couple of things to go through before we get started.'

He picks up a sheet of A4 from both of the wire-mesh baskets under the counter. He asks her to read and sign them and she scans them in panic. They are nothing to worry about, some legal documentation and certifications of consent. Still, her signatures on the dotted lines are not her own. She writes Gwen's name instead. The other tattooist asks if she would like something to drink.

‘Wine, if you have it,' she says. ‘Red wine.'

‘I was thinking more of coffee, or perhaps a tea. No booze, you see,' he says shaking his head. ‘It's against the law.'

‘Don't be such a spoilsport,' the other tattooist says. ‘I can get some wine from upstairs if you really want some.'

‘It's all right,' the other man says, ‘I'll go.'

She watches him disappear through a door, no doubt calling a friend as he lumbers up the stairs –
you'll never guess what
– beginning a dissection of the woman taking off her working clothes, hanging up her jacket and blouse, wrapping a towel around herself and lying front-ways on the large black tattooing chair.

The tattooist's fingers are thin and cold on her back; he talks and she remembers to reply. There is music softly playing and beneath that the softer hum of the ink gun and even lower, even softer than that, once he begins, the pain. The pain is inconstant. As the wings begin to take shape, she concentrates on the buzzing etch of the needle and the brief pauses while he wipes away her blood.

Maria should be thinking about Gwen, about the house they shared and the promises they made; but instead she is thinking about distance, about why some things feel near and some far away, and about the kind of person who would want
Only God Can Judge Me
tattooed on his arm; and how the moments you tell yourself always to remember are just as easily forgotten as those you don't.

She opens her eyes and sees the wine glass and the mirrored glimpse of the tattooist at work, then closes them again and thinks of Gwen – thankfully, finally – and the time they hired a pedalo with the last of their money,
and in the darkening pond drove that boat in furious circles.

Gwen had come to stay, a few days no more, and had remained there for a couple of years. Four years younger, not the sense she was born with, according to their father, just twenty then and working in a clothes shop by day, out on the town in the evening. Maria was in and out of work, a supply cover here, a maternity cover there, never quite getting the nod to stay on, never quite holding on.

‘Fuck 'em,' Gwen would say. ‘Fuck 'em all.' And her plan would be a night out, a bar, a club, a place that Maria would wish to leave early, wanting only to head for her sofa, for her bed, to sleep, to rest. Gwen would insist, she was persuasive in a way that was impossible to resist. The pedalo had been her idea. Never mind the money. Money always sorts itself out. Her long hair with the jagged fringe, protruding hips, wide angry mouth. Leather jacket and short skirts, cigarettes and eyeliner, pub breath and a stare that invited all manner of interpretations.

The four-year difference in age was acute when they were young, Maria calling Gwen her little teddy bear until Gwen was six. Gwen though grew quickly, in height, in demeanour, in personality. She could darken a room with entry, or lighten it, depending on mood. The house they shared – though nominally Maria's – became her space, her domain. When eventually Maria moved out
to be with Tom, Gwen stayed on, a co-worker from the shop taking the vacant room. Maria found visiting difficult, like looking into her unlived life.

When the diagnosis came, it was Maria who needed the calming, the support. Gwen leapt the five stages and headed straight to acceptance. Gwen would not move out of the flat. Gwen still headed out into the city night, still told her sister to lighten up. And then she was in the hospital, her family surrounding her, facing it all down with smiles and flashes of her stained, small teeth.

As the hum and buzz and wipe finishes, Maria is thinking of the conversation about tattoos. They were sitting in the lounge, Maria out of work again, two bottles of cheap red wine on the cracked coffee table. She can hear her sister, but she's only watching her. The way she paces, the way she wrinkles her nose sometimes, the sheer annoyed-joy of being in the same room as her, of appearing in the same frame. She thinks of blowing out a single candle in an individual Bakewell tart. Make a wish. That birthday smell of extinguished wick. Make a wish.

‘All done,' the tattooist says. ‘You can take a look now.'

Maria bunches the towel to her chest as she gets up, sore and feeling the burn of the needle and ink. She allows the tattooist to position her so she can see his work. On her shoulder blades, she has wings. Light, delicate, almost
moth-like wings. She can feel them pulling at her, ready to flutter and flap.

‘Thank you,' she says.

The tattooist asks her questions, but she looks only at her back, at the wings newly there. She watches her wings spread stiffly in the cold afternoon light. The tattooist asks more questions, but she does not answer them.

‘They're perfect,' is all she says. ‘They're just perfect.'