“Isn’t it still quite unusual for a girl to be an inker?”
“I was the only one on my course. Maybe people are put off by the stereotype that most inkers seem to be all biceps.” I hold out my arm, thinnish and pale. “I’m bucking the trend.”
Oscar laughs, and the skin round his eyes creases in a way that makes me want to make him laugh more so I can see it happen again. The amusement stays on his lips even when his laughter ends. But I’m suddenly completely out of conversation. I can’t think of a single thing to say. It’s crazy that I’m still here. I straighten up a little in my chair and try to work out how to leave without being rude.
“It’s really kind of you to have come to my rescue, Oscar. Do you really think those guards would have chucked me out?” I ask as I take a more drinkable sip of coffee.
He shrugs. “Maybe,” he says quietly.
“Well. I won’t take any more of your time; I feel loads better. I should be getting back to my mum.”
Oscar drains the rest of his coffee and smiles. “Well, it’s been nice – this. Chatting and stuff.” He slides his mug away to the edge of the table. “If I can help with anything – with your dad – you only have to ask.” His tone is light but he looks at me from the corner of his eye, as though daring me to take the bait.
“Oh,” I say doubtfully. “It’s a kind offer.” He has no idea what he’d be getting into if he tried to help; not that I have much idea either. “I’m not sure what use bookbinding is for the trouble I’m in.” Oscar raises an eyebrow but doesn’t stop me when I get up.
I can see out of the window that it’s still raining, so I pull my shawl over my head and turn to say goodbye, when I see something that makes me stop. Oscar is reaching for his satchel and as he bends down his shirt rides up, and I glimpse a portion of his family tree. His marks are smoky against his black skin. And suddenly I read him.
A name has been removed and there is a bird pecking at the base of his tree.
A cuckoo. I know what that means.
In a flash I know where I’ve seen Oscar before. He was at the square that day of the marking. The boy with the glasses reaching out for the marked man.
As Oscar straightens up he notices me staring. I look him in the eyes.
“Tell me. Was your father a good man, Oscar?”
Chapter Seventeen
My mind is not on the streets as I hurry home. I can’t fathom what’s just happened. There are too many questions in my mind.
I could ask Mum if she knows what’s going on with Dad’s book – but where do I begin? Can I even begin to trust her? My mind keeps turning back to Oscar; his jaw tight as he scribbled something on a piece of paper and thrust it into my hand before hurrying away, head down against the wind. The note’s in my pocket, but I’m too scared to look at it.
“Leora!” Mum is sitting at the table, and as I come in she sweeps me into a hug and squeezes me tightly. “They kept you late! How did it go? I’ve been dying to know!” I stare at her, disorientated. The studio and Obel and Karl all feels like days ago, so much has happened since. It takes me a moment for my mind to shift from the strange events of this afternoon. I force myself to smile.
“It was brilliant, Mum. Much better than I thought it would be.” I breathe in the familiar scents of home and allow my tight shoulders to relax. Mum pushes me away gently, then turns to grab an oven glove and take a tray of scones out of the oven. I should have guessed she would bake something nice on my first day. She looks at me expectantly, wanting me to go on talking.
And so I tell her about Obel, and how he’s as impressive as people say he is. I don’t mention Karl. I tell her about some of the customers I saw Obel working with and how his own marks are beautiful but nothing in comparison to the work he does on others. I leave out the part about not being able to read him – she would make it into a big thing and freak out that he wasn’t “normal” – and then, I can’t keep it in, and I say, “And I went to the museum to see Dad.”
Mum fumbles and drops one of the hot scones she is putting on the cooling rack. She picks it up with an oven-gloved hand, brushes it off and puts it with the rest. Her face is entirely still.
“Where is he, Mum?” I watch her. She knows something, I can tell; she’s always been a horrible liar. “Mum? When were you going to tell me?”
“Tell you what?” She’s trying to sound calm but I can hear the edge of defensiveness in her voice.
“Do you know where his book is? Do you know why they’ve taken him away?” Mum gets two plates out, resolutely looking anywhere but at me. “You’re not the only one who loved him, Mum. Please.”
Mum drops the baking tray on to the worktop and turns to face me, frowning as she shakes off the oven glove and puts it on the side. “That’s not fair, Leora—”
“It’s not fair that you know stuff about Dad that you’re not telling me.” My voice is wobbling. Mum’s refusal to admit what she knows is making me angry. “I’m scared, Mum. What does all this mean for his weighing of the soul ceremony?”
“Sweetheart,” she says as she comes and tries to hug me, which irritates me, “you’re getting worked up.” I shake her off. “Look.” She takes my face in her hands. “I should have warned you – I did get a letter. I didn’t realize you were so keen to visit him. They’re withholding his book before his ceremony. But sweetheart, this is … it’s a technicality, it happens sometimes. Something they have to investigate, but nothing to worry about.”
I can’t tell any more if she believes this or if she’s lying to me. “No, Mum. I know something’s wrong.” She opens her mouth to speak. “Don’t. There are things you’ve been keeping from me. I know there’s stuff about Dad you don’t want me to know.”
“You make it sound like there’s some big secret,” she says dismissively, as though I’m a schoolgirl asking silly questions, and my frustration rises.
“He was marked, wasn’t he? With the crow.” I whisper it – I don’t dare say it any louder – and I watch her face. It is completely unreadable. She won’t let me in. I will get no answers from her tonight.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Leora.” Her voice strives for authority, but it sounds whisper-thin.
I drop my plate with the scone back on to the table. “I’m not hungry,” I say as I pick up my shawl. “Don’t wait up.”
I leave the house with Mum calling after me. “Leora, come on! Don’t be so silly.”
I have never disobeyed her before.
I walk without giving much thought to where I am going. I like it when the streets are empty. I like walking past houses and imagining who lives there. During the day, when people are out and about, their lives shout at you from their marks – there’s no avoiding people’s life stories and no room for guessing at who they are and what their life consists of. But when everyone is hidden behind walls and doors and curtained windows I can picture the bits of their lives the tattoos cannot show. I imagine what conversations they’re having before they brush their teeth, what they’re reading, what made them laugh and cry today.
We were all so close before he got ill. We all had our roles in our little family. Mum was the calm, sensible one. Dad was always telling stories. He loved the fables and old tales – the White Witch, Saint. I would listen with eyes like saucers. And if they got too scary, Mum would stop him, saying he’d give me nightmares. Then he’d end up telling us some silly story about the trouble he used to get into when he was a boy and Mum and I would laugh until our cheeks went pink, Mum shaking her head, disapproving a bit, knowing Dad was teasing her, and me amazed at the idea that a grown-up had ever been naughty. And I bounced between the two of them – usually quiet and docile, but occasionally, just occasionally, flaring into rebellion.
I don’t know how long I walk for – hours maybe – but I stay out till I’m sure Mum will have gone to bed. When I arrive back at my house, I stop for a moment outside, looking up at it. If I don’t go in, I can still pretend that everyon
e is still in there, that Dad isn’t just a book to be read. That he’s not missing.
That Mum is just Mum, and not a liar in Mum’s clothing.
When I get downstairs in the morning, there’s a chicken defrosting on a plate and a note on the table from Mum: Gone to work early, have a good day. Please put dinner on when you get back. She’s avoiding me.
And I know that I’m never going to get answers from her. I have no choice but to take out the scrap of paper Oscar gave me. I check my pocket and unfold it.
What makes a good man?
You can trust me, Leora.
If you want to talk, meet me Friday 6 p.m. At the square.
Beneath the words is a tiny scrawled picture of a crow.
Chapter Eighteen
I stare at Oscar’s note for so long that I’m in danger of making myself late for work. I gulp down some tea and take a cold scone with me to eat on the way. There was more rain last night and the leaves on the ground are mushy and fragrant.
I get to the studio just on time. Karl’s waiting and he opens his mouth to say something – something rude probably – but then Obel appears at the door and he can’t. It doesn’t stop him looking at me like dirt. I glare at the back of his head as I follow him in. Now that we’re both stuck with each other, I don’t know why he can’t just get on with it.
Obel lets us in and gets right to the point.
“Different tasks for you both today. Karl, I want you to work on perfecting your drawing skills. The mark you made on your leg shows some natural talent, but that’s only going to take you so far. It needs refining – I need you to be making lines that are faultless. Go through this book,” Obel slides a textbook of tattoo styles across the table, “and try to imitate the marks. But don’t just copy – I want you to feel the emotions of each mark – OK?”
“Erm, right.” Karl looks baffled but picks up the book, a dip pen and ink and goes to a desk. As he passes me he whispers, “Hear that? ‘Natural talent’.”
“Leora, you’re with me again.” Obel nods his head towards the studio and I follow him into the light space, Karl glaring as I go. The man is all sympathy and feeling with his clients, and all cold words with Karl and me. I still can’t read him – I feel like he is behind glass in the museum – beautiful but dead.
Obel has a lot of clients. Some are coming to be marked, others to talk about the ideas they have for future markings. I smile when one man comes in with his tiny white dog and asks whether Obel will ink his “best friend” on his buttock in place of a marriage mark. “Well, I’m never going to get married, am I?” I am struck by the fact that each customer comes to the inkers alone, and when there’s a brief lull and I’m sorting out the kit for the next customer, I decide to ask Obel about it.
“Everyone comes to see you on their own. Why?”
Obel is wiping down a surface and he takes his time before answering. “Some studios don’t mind either way, but I like to see people alone. I need to know they’re choosing their mark for themselves and not being swayed by anyone else. Some people are very suggestible. They like to be told what to think. But their mark must be their own; their story is too important. I won’t allow it to be influenced by anyone else.” He moves a chair into position for the next customer.
“You don’t think that you influence them?” I ask, worried he will think I’m asking too many questions.
He pauses and seems to consider what I’ve said. “Part of my job is to act as a mirror for each of my clients. I try to lose the sense of being their inker and aim to become simply another part of them. I reflect their passions and fears. I become their safe place. You’d be surprised how many people tell me things they’ve never told their closest friend.” He gives me a thoughtful look. “This is part of the job that can’t be taught, Leora. The part that takes you from someone with a bit of talent to a real inker.”
Over the course of the day we see a man who wants to mark the occasion of his son’s birth without letting his wife know that he has a mistress. We see an elderly woman who wants to record a memory she has of the first time she kissed a man. “My mind is going, you see, and there are some things you don’t want to forget.” I get a delivery of flowers, with a card from Mel that reads Hope you’re settling in well. You have chosen one of our noblest professions. And underneath she’s drawn a picture of Saint.
At the end of the day, after Karl has just left, I am tidying up a few pieces and arranging my flowers in a jug, when a woman walks in. Obel looks up as she enters. She’s slight and dark, and there’s something in her eyes that makes me pause.
“We’re closed,” he says, but he says it kindly.
“I know. I just… Do you have time to see me?” she asks, and hands a piece of paper to Obel. He looks at it and then flips the sign on the door to closed.
“Please. Come and sit down,” he says courteously, pushing the piece of paper she had passed him into his back pocket. I hesitate, unsure whether I should stay or leave, and catch Obel looking at me thoughtfully. Then he seems to make a decision and says:
“This is Leora, she’s training with me – are you happy for her to be with us?”
The woman looks at me with eyes shining and red from too many tears. She pauses a moment and then seems to make up her mind. “Yes, that’s fine.”
As Obel speaks to the woman I hear the sadness of her soul. She tells us she has lost her baby and wants a leaf at the base of her family tree to mark his life.
Obel is quiet and nods at her request, apparently willing to break his own rule and mark her right away. She sits on a stool and I help her lift her top, and she leans on her forearms against the chair ready for the ink to begin. As she settles herself down I see her crumpled stomach with angry purple stretch marks. I look at her back and see that her family tree already has two fallen leaves resting at the base of the trunk – brown and skeletal compared to the rich green of the rest of the family represented on her tree. I touch her shoulder and there is an almost electric connection between us. I sense the heaviness of breasts that are full, yet with no baby to feed. I feel the emptiness, the grief, the rage, the guilt, the brokenness that says, “I can’t do it again,” and the yearning that whispers, “but I must, I must.” The woman looks up and my eyes are full of tears.
“I’m sorry.” I’m ashamed by the strength of my emotions and am desperately afraid that I will have increased her pain – or that she’ll think I pity her. Obel has been watching us in silence and now takes me to one side, out of earshot of the woman waiting.
“It’s clear to me that this is your job, Leora. You must make the mark.”
I catch his eye to see if he means it. “But I can’t,” I whisper. “I’ve never done this before.”
“The connection is enough –” he holds out the tub of gloves, insistent “– if you’re a true inker. You might as well find out sooner rather than later, hey?”
I take a pair of gloves with shaking hands and Obel gives me an almost imperceptible nod of encouragement.
The woman nods too, smiling gently at me.
I carefully set up my workstation, cleaning everything and laying out all that I will need. I pick up a pen. A leaf – a leaf for his short life. I barely think as I draw guidelines on her skin. Only as I pick up the machine to start work do I falter; it feels heavy in my hand and I am afraid of hurting her. I am afraid of dishonouring her longed-for baby by marking her badly.
But as I press my foot down on the pad and the machine switches on I am lulled into a trance. I hear only the buzz and I feel only the emotions of the woman whose back I am branding. The lines come easily – the colours show me where to blend, where to hold back. I forget everything apart from the skin under my hand. I am not creating the image; it is pouring out of me.
As the sound of the machine fades I am brought back to life. I wipe away the ink that spills over the image and lift a mirror so the woman can see what I’ve done.
She gasps. And even I am surprised. I haven�
�t done a brown leaf to match the other lost children; this one shines red and gold. Even in its demise it shows beauty and hope for a new season to come.
“It’s perfect. Oh. It’s just how I think of him. I can’t thank you enough.” The tears are coming now. She lets me cover the mark, dresses and wipes her eyes on a cream-coloured handkerchief. Then suddenly the words tumble out of her as if a dam has broken. “Thank you so much again, both of you. I was so unsure about coming; my husband thinks I should just forget. He was only two days old. And I know we mustn’t—” She blots tears from her cheeks. “But I was meant to see you. And you saw me; you saw right into me. Thank you.” As she speaks I see Obel’s jaw tense – his eyes shine with feeling and understanding.
She pays Obel and leaves, wrapping her cloak round herself. I’m so overwhelmed I can hardly speak.
“Obel, that felt amazing. What happened? It was as if she was leading my hands – it’s like … it wasn’t me who did that.” Obel smiles widely at me.
“I knew it, girl. You’re born to mark.” His face is suddenly serious, “Leora, there’s no need to tell anyone about customers we see out of hours, all right? Consider it inker–inked confidentiality.”
I just look at him and nod, but when I empty the bin before I leave I see the piece of paper she’d given Obel. I flatten it out and smooth the creases. On it is a picture of a feather.
A feather – the sign of the blanks. But she seemed so normal, and so broken.
And then, with a horrible rush of adrenaline, it clicks. If her baby was two days old, he couldn’t have had his birth mark. Babies who die before they’re marked are officially considered blank. I don’t know what to do – my first mark and Obel let me break the law, made me do it.
I’ve just made a mark of remembrance for a baby that should be forgotten.
Ink Page 10