Tattoo-man By Amanda Marples
‘Ticket and passes? Anymore tickets and passes please?’
That’s my routine. Routines are good, but wearing. Like the locker room: same disinfectant smell, rolling the same stiff numbers on the barrel, hitting the same sore spot on my thumb. Use a different finger I tell myself, and forget immediately. But my fares please patter is a comfort to me and to them: my morning tram people.
Always the same.
I know them without knowing them. I have favourites. The woman with grizzled orange hair who smells of mints and cigarettes and always has the right change. The pretty girl in the uniform who always smiles. Then there’s the miseries. No eye contact, nothing. Huffing and puffing. One of them trembles and has bloodshot eyes. But really, I like them all. Because I know them.
And then there’s the silent drama. Only I have noticed, I’m sure. Those two should really get it on. If it wasn’t for the job, I’d intervene. It’s painful to watch though. He gets on first, chooses his seat. Then she gets on, and sits where she can see him. Always. He moves, she moves. Like chess. Everyone else sits in the same place every day. But these too are playing a game. I watch them watching each other; trying not to get caught. He doesn’t look her type. He’s older, more my age, and one of these alternative types: big beard, piercings, tattoos all up the side of his neck. Probably under his shirt too. She’s more corporate-looking. Nails are done, wears a suit. She’s got a nice face but there’s something I can’t read, something hidden. She looks at him the second he looks away. Like tennis. Just sit next to him I think while I’m asking for tickets and passes. Just say hi. Once or twice she caught me watching her watching him and she blushed and smiled in a weird apologetic way. He gets off in the town centre, she gets off the next stop, heads for the law quarter. Legal secretary? Solicitor? He doesn’t seem to look at her as much as she looks at him, but a few times he’s got all flustered. Dropped all his change. I saw her smiling as he bent to pick it up with shaky fingers. He knew she was watching him dealing with me. It’s coming off him in waves it’s so intense. Once he didn’t hear me ask for fares, because of his headphones. Nearly jumped out of his skin when he realised I was there waiting. I felt bad, but she was very amused. He spent the rest of that journey staring intensely out of the window. I don’t like headphones. They close people off. Nobody takes a chance. I wish they would.
I sometimes wonder if they think about each other in the day. Does he float up in her mind while she’s listening to a boring client? Does he think of how her head might feel in his hands, his fingers sliding through her hair while he’s filling up his morning flask? His hands are big, and rough. Sort of capable. Sometimes he carries a guitar case. I think he’s trying to provide a conversation opener. The first time he brought it I swear she rolled her eyes at me. She’s kidding herself. She was as impressed as I was. I’d love to play the guitar. But work, and time and money – you know.
I think about them. When I’m holding my mother’s hand at Dewton Lodge, dabbing at her mouth with a napkin. When I’m ironing my uniform. When I’m watching TV with a microwave dinner on my lap. I’m almost excited to see them again. Sometimes he doesn’t get on. Occasional day off I suppose, or sick. And I feel this… disappointment. I can’t remember a time when she hasn’t got on – for some reason – but there must have been a time. Maybe he’s more obvious with his tattoos and everything, and that heart he wears right out on his sleeve. My mother used to say that about me. She said I was ripe to be picked, and bruised by some woman and I should be careful. Maybe he’s the same. Maybe that’s why he won’t make a move. I wouldn’t either, if I was in love with a stranger. I might have trekkie badges and not tattoos but in that regard we’re the same. But it looks like he’s torturing himself, while she just smiles. I can’t work out that smile.
Yesterday morning it was snowing, and everything seemed different in the whiteness. Hardly any passengers, and no tattoo-man either. Connecting trains all buggered up with the snow. But the woman was there, maybe two others in the next carriage, stamping wellies and unzipping jackets.
‘Tickets and passes please’ I said as I approached and she smiled, displaying her ticket in the palm of her hand. She narrowed her eyes and leaned in.
‘Why don’t you talk to him?’ she said.
I thought she meant the driver, something about the weather but her eyes were dancing. A tiny puddle had gathered by her foot where her scarf had dripped melted snow.
‘Excuse me?’ I said, feeling the beginning of a blush. She put her pass away.
‘You know. Guitar-man. It’s really obvious.’ she said. I nodded at her and walked away, blazing hot.
This morning he’s here.
When she got on she smiled and nodded at me and then went right to the back. She is facing away from us, reading a book. Leaving me to it. Leaving us to it.
Tattoo-man, guitar-man.
He’s here and his cheeks are burning under his beard.
‘Tickets and passes?’ I say to him, and, has the tram tilted sideways? His palm is full of change; his fingers brush mine. Hot, trembling. I tear his ticket by accident. ‘Oops’ I say and want to die. He laughs. I laugh.
I can’t wait for tomorrow.
Judges Comments
Amanda Marple's Tattoo-man stood out as the winner of our 1,000-word short story competition for several reasons. There isn't a wasted word in this beautifully textured story that seamlessly blends its narrator's exterior and interior lives. Concentrating its attention to a daily commute, it doesn't try to pack in more than is absolutely necessary in the way of plot or characters, but amplifies a small everyday occurence into a layered and resonant story.
There's the mounting sense of a story unfolding, a satisfying twist and a hopeful resolution at the end that turns Tattoo-man into a nascent love story. There's the sense of place on the moving tram, whose journey mirrors the momentum of this story as it shifts from its starting place to its unexpected ending. There's the way the conventional romantic triangle is gently subverted: we aren't, like the narrator, watching an attraction between two commuters. There's the poetic irony that the observational narrator has noticed less about their own heart than the woman they've been watching. There's Amanda's nuanced way with words, and the delicate control with which she leads her reader through a sensitive narrative of a lonely life that expands through contact with other people. It's a story about watching and looking, but not necessarily seeing.
There's also the delightful way that Amanda transforms the mundane and the everyday into something extraordinary - the possibility of hope, of romance. Because of the skill with which Amanda has shown her readers life from her narrator's point of view, it enables us to feel the awakening possibility - expressed, as attraction so often is in the real world, through inept, clumsy, trivial beginnings - that something signnificant is starting.
Also shortlisted in the 1,000 word short story competition were: Sukie Baker, Poole, Dorset; Alan Barker, Epsom, Surrey; Dominic Bell, Hull; Stacey Chesters, Denton, Manchester; Jan Halstead, Little Horwood, Buckinghamshire; Sally A Krykant, Lowestoft, Suffolk; Colin Wales, Gargunnock, Stirling; Jenny Woodhouse, Bath, Somerset.