My wife has a tattoo on her left thigh. I guess that there are other men whose wives have tattoos as well, but this one is unusual, if not unique. It is on the outside of her thigh, level with her pubis, hidden by a skirt or shorts, but since I designed it, I am always conscious of it being there. When she wears stockings and a suspender belt, the tattoo is framed between stocking top and suspender straps, and all it would need is for the hem of her skirt to be raised, and the tattoo would be visible to all.
Of course, that has never happened. In the real world, outside erotic fiction, in middle class Brighton, on the south coast of conservative England, the hem of a skirt is never raised as high as that. So Laura's tattoo is rarely seen by others, and as far as I can remember, it is only on the beach that it has been bared. Then, it is visible below the inverted side curve of her bikini bottom.
With friends, or relatives, Laura's tattoo is more intriguing. On the rare weekend when the summer sun is shining, we might picnic on the beach, and invite friends to join us, other children for ours to play with, and adults for us to talk with, or we might bring Laura's parents who live nearby and love their grand-children, or my sister and her family, down from London, or Laura's brother, and his, from nearby Lewes. For them, for family and friends who see it, the tattoo is so clearly out of character with the reliably conservative, calm, collected, organised wife and mother that Laura is.
But no one comments. From the summer when it was first displayed, no one has ever asked Laura why she had herself tattooed. Nor do they realise that it was my decision, not hers, both the original, and the additions. Whether any of them has ever guessed the tattoo's significance, I do not know. To even mention it would be indiscrete.
In France, of course, the tattoo is noticed, and comments have been made. Each July, before the school term ends, Laura's parents move into our spare bedroom to take care of the children, and we have two glorious weeks to ourselves, driving to Dover, across to Calais, then heading south, to the French beaches, where bikinis are not required.
In two weeks I can work up a deep, nut brown tan. There is Italian blood in my mother's genes. Laura, even with her dark brown hair, has Irish blood, and her milk white complexion requires maximum protection, hardly tans at all, but instead a spattering of freckles appears, covering her entire body. Amongst the naked, golden or nutmeg bodies that litter the beaches there, Laura's untanned complexion stands out, like a new arrival, even after two weeks of lying in the sun. Men walk past eyeing her. At beach bars, the guys will look, overtly enjoying her nakedness, all the more stark for her pure, delicate whiteness in a sea of bronze.
Then, occasionally, someone will comment, usually when I am not there, getting the drinks or going to the gents. Someone nearby will compliment her, on her complexion, or her breasts with their wide, pink areoles and thick stubs of nipples, on her tattoo, or on the one piece of jewellery that she always wears, a small gold lock that I bought her as an anniversary present.
Once, only once, someone made a comment not to Laura, but to me, in Laura's hearing. He was French, although the beach had Italians, Spaniards, Germans, Dutch and every other European nationality. He spoke in French, the sense, if not each word, unambiguous. He thought my wife was beautiful. He liked her tattoo.
Should I wish to add to it, he would be honoured. It was only once, and I declined, but it told Laura something that she had been avoiding. He knew, and if he knew, then perhaps others knew as well.
Picture a simple, solid, black oval, on its side, an inch long and half an inch high, slightly to the front of a woman's left thigh and level with her exposed, protruding labia. Add a long tapered tail, also in solid black, maybe a quarter of an inch wide where it emerges from the oval head, rising and falling in waves as it curves around the side of her thigh and narrowing towards the under curve of her buttocks, each of the waves smaller than the one before it.
Picture this black silhouette of a simple head and tail on the pure, milk white skin of the woman's outer thigh, positioned so that if the tail could flick back and forwards, like a water snake, the whole shape would swim around the front of her leg directly to her hairless pubis, and her protruding labia. If you have that image in your mind, black ink, needle deep under white skin that can be freckled in the sun, then you will know what I decided on, in the week that followed Laura's trip to Germany.
Were you to see Laura naked now, you will see more than that single tattoo. It has been added to. The same basic shape has been used. It was chosen for a reason, and that reason is unchanged. So the additional tattoos are identical, but each is only half the length of the original, positioned one below the other, and centred on the first. There are now three of these. A fourth is in the planning. Only Laura and I know exactly what each means. And, of course, the guy on the beach in France, who worked it out, and offered his services to service her, so there may in fact be others. A member of the family or a friend who has seen the tattoo, and the additions that have one by one appeared beneath, even one of them may have solved the riddle, and never said anything to indicate their understanding of it meaning. That thought punishes my wife. But then after what happened in Germany, she deserves that punishment.
Germany was beyond my control, not that I had ever felt the need to control Laura. Our relationship was based on trust. It is only when trust has broken down that control is required. Laura understands that now. She realised herself, when she told me about Germany, that trust could no longer underpin our relationship. Trust had gone, and would have to be replaced with something different. She may not then have appreciated the full consequences of her actions, but she has accepted them. She has since abided by my decisions at every point. She may not have honoured while she was in Germany, but she does obey.
Germany came out of the blue. Then, we had been married for twelve years. Our children were eight and six. I have always earned good money, and Laura did not need to work, but she always had, and after each period of maternity leave, she went back to work again. Her mother would look after the children when they were too young for school, and once they started, she readily agreed to bring them to school and collect them afterwards, allowing Laura the time she needed to hold down her job.
Laura enjoyed working, partly for the sense of achievement she gained from managing a senior executive's office, and partly for the social interaction that went with office life. The company was an international corporation, and Laura's boss was responsible for its European operations. That was why Germany came about, although his asking Laura to come with him was the first time that that had happened. He had said that he needed her to minute some crucial meetings while he was there.
