In Great-grandma’s bungalow, everything sits in its rightful place. As a child, I see the dark patches beneath the ornaments on the windowsill as I polish them, letting me know it’s been a fair few trips around the sun since they were placed there. I see the tools she can’t live without: the fly swatter, the shoehorn, the piles of crosswords, and the wooden back scratcher with the duck handle. What strikes me most of all though, is the strange patch of bright-white skin on her left upper arm. For some reason it transfixes me. Initially I assume it’s a birthmark, but the more I look, the more I start to see an anchor. Sturdy and steadying and unmistakable. I’d asked about it once before when I was younger, and was told she’d burned herself on the iron and it had made a terrible mark. Then I was told to change the subject.

When I ask again, to my surprise, she tells me the mark is from a tattoo she got a very long time ago. She says she saved up for years to have it removed, which seems strange to me. Why did she need it gone so badly? My mind moves over a million possibilities. Gran used to be a pirate and getting the tattoo was part of her initiation. Gran married a sailor and they were so in love they got matching anchors and vowed to steady each other forever. I question her until she gives me a knowing look over her reading glasses and says, ‘That’s all I have to say on the matter’. A twinkle in her eye tells me she knows she is only strengthening my curiosity, and with that, I am obsessed.

I ask my other grandma about it, great-grandma’s daughter, my mother’s mother. Grandma with the red hair not grandma with the grey hair. She pauses before answering, then tells me I’m correct about the tattoo but wrong about the shape. It wasn’t an anchor, it was a Celtic cross with filigree all around it, the cross of Iona in honour of Grandma’s Irish heritage. My curiosity deepens.

At school we learn about women being enrolled in the war effort in World War II and how this was a first in society. We learn about women expected to lead small lives, and to make do with domesticity. I think again about Gran’s tattoo.

When I get home I ask Mum about it, and her answers seem to betray an attempt to keep a lid on things she maybe shouldn’t say. Nevertheless she discloses that, “Her and her sister Alice got the tattoos together. They were beatniks. Your great gran used to walk around the streets of London barefoot.” My imagination whirls and I look up beatnik in the dictionary:

"beatnik"

noun - a person who participated in a social movement of the 1950s and early 1960s which stressed artistic self-expression and the rejection of the mores of conventional society.

When I think about Gran, I think about ancient ornaments and back scratchers. I think about Madeira cake and crumble covered in expertly executed custard, not an untameable wild woman running barefoot through Old London Town! Suddenly, the idea that a burn from an iron would leave such a distinct shape seems ludicrous and I shake my head at my younger, gullible self. I wonder what reason she had for keeping this from me for so long.