Hummingbird Tattoo

THE HUMMINGBIRD TATTOO by Neil McCall

When long-empty commercial premises re-opened as a tattoo parlour,
reaction in the village was mixed; some thought it was in the same
league of tackiness as the nearby massage parlour, others were prepared
to accept that any business was better than the forlorn, empty,
whitewashed windows which were becoming all too common in the high
street. But even the objectors were won over as word got around that it
was a nice kind of tattoo parlour, very hygienic and tasteful, and the
girls from the supermarket were soon showing off elegant little
butterflies and leaf patterns to each other. So one evening I ventured
in after work; not that I'm heavily into tattoos, piercings or any
other body adornment, I just felt like doing something a little
adventurous for once and, well, it wouldn't hurt to take a look. The
proprietress was a small, dark-haired elfin-faced girl who welcomed me,
guided me to a plush settee and gave me a huge folder of artwork to
browse through. I wandered through a world of religious and occult
symbolism, garish monsters, sneering devils and fantastic angels; none
of this appealed to me! Then I saw something which captivated my heart;
a hummingbird, his wings and back the glossy purple-black of
freshly-picked blackberries and his belly a vivid custard-yellow. I had
to have him!

"That will be a hundred and twenty pounds and a full day session,"
warned the tattooist, but I was adamant, and set aside my free
Saturday, my grocery allowance and my left upper arm.

It would be untrue to say that the procedure didn't hurt, but it was
bearable, more of a stinging scratch which rose and fell in intensity
throughout the day. The tattooist, Gilda, explained that this was a new
style of semi-permanent tattoo which would last at least two years and
could then be refreshed or left to fade, but I was already promising my
new half-completed friend that I would keep him and make him permanent
when I could afford it! Finally I stepped out of the parlour a new but
impoverished man; I was just in time to stock up on date-expired bread
and a large jar of value jam at the supermarket. My Sunday lunch was
therefore rather uninspiring; lentils from the corner of the store
cupboard, boiled up with a few spices, and jam sandwiches for afters,
but I didn't care; I kept peeking at and admiring my hummingbird
tattoo. I called him Hal, short for Halcyon, which really applies to
kingfishers but seemed so appropriate for such a beautiful bird.

On Monday I selected the shirt with the shortest sleeves to wear for
work, which allowed my colleagues to glimpse Hal, and soon I was the
centre of attraction, which, as two-thirds of my work colleagues are
female, was rather gratifying. However, as the lunch break approached I
glanced down at my left arm for the umpteenth time and found to my
horror that Hal was gone; a supposed semi-permanent tattoo hadn't even
lasted two days! I grabbed the telephone directory and found the number
of the tattoo parlour, ready to give Gilda an earful and expecting some
defensive bluster in return, but Gilda interrupted me with a strange
question:

"What did he cost you?"

"A hundred and twenty pounds, of course; I gave you the cash
myself!" I answered.

"No, no; I mean, what did you go without to get him?"

"Groceries," I said, "I spent two weeks food allowance at your
parlour and now I'm living on jam and bread."

"Oh!" breathed Gilda. "You've starved for him; he will love that!
You are a lucky man, or you will be, for he will reward you
greatly."

"And how's he supposed to do that if he's completely faded?" I asked
with some asperity.

Gilda laughed: "He hasn't faded, he'll not be far away. Look to your
friends and lovers, you will find him soon enough."

As I put the phone down in puzzlement I noticed a commotion by the
coffee machine, and fingers pointing my way. A girl from the floor
below approached me, and lifted her sleeve; she had a tattoo of a
daffodil on her arm, and, hovering beneath the daffodil with his long
bill searching for the nectar, was Hal!

"I think we need to talk," said the girl, "after work?"

I nodded, and Hal chose that moment to return to me.

The girl was named Tina, and had received her daffodil tattoo
shortly before my own. We went for a curry - Tina was more than happy
to pay, when she heard my self-sacrificing story - then she invited me
back to her flat. We had a coffee, and Hal once more crossed to her arm
to feed from the daffodil, at which point Tina took my hand and led me
to the bedroom. My few previous sexual encounters had been clumsy and
awkward, but that night the sex was marvellous; sharing Hal meant that
we could share each other more intensely, for we didn't need to trade
half-expressed desires but knew instinctively what would heighten the
pleasure for both of us. Next morning, however, I had no idea how to
proceed, but Tina put me at ease:

"We don't have to be an item just because we've slept together," she
explained, "and, in any case, I've got a boyfriend. But Hal can come
and visit any time!"

And he did; at work I often felt a tell-tale pull against my arm,
and Hal would be gone for a while. One day, however, I was called into
the office of Shirley, my section leader - my review was not yet due,
and I suddenly felt rather nervous, especially when she asked me to
close the door behind me. What had I done wrong?

"I want to show you something," Shirley said, and turned her back to
me. She lifted her skirt with one hand, and pulled down her tights and
knickers with the other. On her left buttock was a tattoo of
intertwined poppies, and above the poppies hovered Hal.

"He's so sweet," she gushed, "you are lucky to have him!" And at
that point, Hal disappeared from amongst the poppies and I felt him
once again on my arm.

"Aw, he's gone again!" she exclaimed, examining her rear. "But you
don't have to go just yet," she ordered as she saw me sidling towards
the door.

Hal was indeed rewarding me; soon after the above incident came a
promotion, as recommended by Shirley for "willingly taking on extra
duties", and I was finding it incredibly easy to pick up women; all I
had to do was visit a club and Hal would gravitate towards someone with
a flower tattoo, if I kept my eyes open I would soon discover who the
lucky girl was. "I see you've found my hummingbird" is not a standard
chat-up line in any dating guide, but worked a treat for me.
Occasionally the recipient's tattoo would not be visible which made for
more fun; the girl would often retire to the sidelines and start
touching herself in a puzzled way as she felt Hal's presence and
somehow I could tune into that and introduce myself; Hal had a good
sense of fitness when it came to women and rarely landed on the nervy
kind who would scream as though they had a tarantula down their back,
they were no reward for either of us!

But, oddly enough, I found my wife not in the tattooed throngs of
the nightclub, but in the public library. One day I was browsing for
books when I felt Hal leave me, and a delighted gasp from a
well-dressed olive-skinned young lady on a computer terminal betrayed
his new presence. I placed myself on the chair attached to the adjacent
terminal and, feeling my gaze, she turned away modestly.

"Excuse me, I think if you look at your tattoo you'll find something
interesting," I said politely.

"How did you know?" she began and, realising that something peculiar
was happening, retired to a secluded corner where she could lift the
collar of her long-sleeved blouse and peer inside.

"The hummingbird's mine," I explained as she returned wide-eyed. "He
does that sometimes," I said lamely.

I took her to a coffee bar where we drank thick, silty Turkish
coffee. Her name was Yasmin, meaning jasmine, and her family was from
Ankara. She was studying for a PhD at the university and, like me, had
a bedsit as the rest of her family lived in London. I escorted her back
to her bedsit where we had no sex whatsoever, not even a kiss, but we
arranged to meet again the following day. On that occasion we drank
coffee perched chastely on the edge of her bed, but she condescended to
lift her sleeve and show me the spray of flowers tattooed on her right
arm.

"What are they?" I asked. "Jasmine?"

"Bougainvillea," she replied. I lifted my shirt sleeve also, and
gently touched Hal against the bougainvillea tattooed on Yasmin's bare
arm. The response was electrifying; Hal's ecstatic fluttering
transmitted itself through both our bodies, I gasped and Yasmin cried
out for joy. No wonder Hal loved bougainvillea, they were the kind of
exotic flowers which would be natural to the countries in which real
hummingbirds are found.

"Will you marry me?" I asked immediately.

"Oh, yes," she replied, "But you'll have to get round my
father!"

That was, surprisingly, not difficult, for although they were a
Muslim family they, like most Turks, were fairly nominal and took to me
straight away; I wondered whether or not Hal had some mystical
influence there too! But, out of respect for her family traditions, we
stayed celibate through our courtship, confining ourselves to
bare-armed embraces which, thanks to Hal, were deeply satisfying and
enhanced our love. Needless to say, I stayed out of nightclubs and Hal,
despite entreaties from the girls at work, sated himself with Yasmin's
blooms alone. But on our wedding night he hovered, then dived deep into
the cluster of bougainvillea as Yasmin arched and panted and bled,
leaving the scent of crushed exotic blossom on the hotel sheets.

We honeymooned in Turkey, touring round and staying both with her
burgeoning clan of relatives and in tourist fleshpots; we had to be
circumspect when only a thin wall separated us from aunts and uncles,
but made up for it with noisy unbridled lovemaking in Icmeler and
Fethiye, such that hotel waiters would take me aside and ask wistfully
whether Yasmin had any unmarried sisters upcountry. Hal loved Turkey
too, his feathers radiating bottle-green and ultramarine iridescence in
the strong sunlight. But all too soon we had to return to a rainy
British autumn with Yasmin already in the first stages of
pregnancy.

We purchased a small two-bedroom terrace house in a poorer area of
the city, although the mortgage repayments on even this modest home bit
heavily into my increased salary, and I started moonlighting at the
local DIY centre on Sundays whilst a bloated Yasmin wrote up her PhD.
During early November Yasmin suffered a loss of blood and was placed on
bed rest to save the unborn child; from then on every anxious day
completed represented a minor step towards a safe delivery, I was
getting absolutely knackered as I had to do the housework each evening
and spend my free Saturday chasing all the chores I'd failed to
complete in the previous five days. Hal would still visit Yasmin, but
she gave him no welcome in her preoccupation with the endangered baby,
and I was shocked to see how quickly he deteriorated in the dank late
autumn, his upperparts reduced to a mass of dull, matt black and his
belly now the colour of bruised apricots; I ought to see Gilda and get
him touched up, I thought, but no longer had the time nor the money. I
set about trying to convert the small bedroom into a nursery, but when
I tried to remove shelving which the previous occupant had installed in
an effort to avoid paying business rates for an office, the ancient
plaster crumbled away and I was faced with an unwelcome bill for a
plasterer as this work was beyond both my skills and my available
time.

Someone at work recommended Jack as a reliable tradesperson, and he
duly came with two assistants to replaster the nursery wall; at the end
of their first day Yasmin was distraught with their banging and
slapping and her inevitable lack of privacy; she didn't like being left
alone in bed with three men in the next room but it couldn't be helped,
I had used all my outstanding annual leave on the honeymoon. That
evening, however, she suddenly arose from a drowsy state and gave a
cry:

"Where's your hummingbird tattoo?"

I looked at my arm; I hadn't noticed Hal leave and he certainly
wasn't on Yasmin.

"If you've been going with another woman I'll kill you!" she said
fiercely and began to sob helplessly. I reckon she would have too;
passion cuts both ways!

"I haven't, honestly!" I protested desperately. "I don't know where
he is!" And I waited up the night for Hal to return, but he didn't.

The next morning I woke with a start; I'd fallen asleep in the
armchair and the reliable Jack was banging on the door. I let him in;
he explained that he'd had an accident and wouldn't be able to use his
arm, so he'd have to merely supervise the two younger men.

"I got really paralytic last night," he confessed. "These so-called
mates must have carried me to that tattoo place, though they deny it,
'cos, d'you know what? I woke up this morning, went to the bog and saw
that someone had done a bleedin' bird just above my Rose Of
England."

I felt sick with sudden anxiety.

"What did you do with it?" I asked.

"It had to go, dinnit? I've got this thing about birds, you see,
hate 'em. Some people it's spiders or mice, me it's birds. Anyway, I
got this heavy-duty sander; hurt like hell, feel like I'm gonna need a
skin graft, but I got rid of the little sod eventually ? hey, you all
right, mate, you're not looking too good?"