The Park Lark

Author: David Shaw

I’ve written a couple of stories about things that happened when I was running wild with a young guy called Jodi Malenger. I guess a lot of people doubt they’re true and I’m not about to argue the point — why bother? But since there’s been quite a few readers who seem to enjoy them I’ll recount another one.

The scene is England, more years ago than I care to remember now. And again we’d gone wandering well away from our local area in Jodi’s van. Well, the van that belonged to Jodi’s Dad and that Jodi often borrowed.

So, it was another town we were in, on a working day, and about as boring as you could imagine. Apart from everything else the sun was beating down out of a cloudless blue sky and everybody was as grumpy as hell. The English expect bad weather like New Yorkers expect rudeness — it goes with the territory and anything else messes with their minds. Still, Jodi had put a shoulder bag inside the van and winked at us when he’d done it. The other four of us figured he must have something interesting planned, though we didn’t know what it was. Anyway, while Jodi was driving Jacko opened up the bag and showed us what was stowed in it. And the contents of that bag had us scratching our heads alright.

There were two paint brushes, brand new but cut off so there was only about an inch of hairs left on each handle. There were two identical copies of a newspaper — well, ‘The News Of The World’, if you can call that a newspaper, and a net. Yes, a net. Made of very fine nylon cord, about eight feet by four feet, with mesh big enough for us to easily put our hands through the holes. Oh, and just to make everything clearer, when we opened up one of the big newspapers we found that around the sides of the center pages were long dressmakers’ pins. There must have been a dozen of them in each paper, pinning all the pages together so it was impossible to turn them over. And, finally, there was a polaroid camera and three film packs.

I guess Sherlock Holmes would have worked out straight away what Jodi was planning to do; none of us could though.

“Jodi, what the hell is this lot for?” Jacko asked.

“For fishing with; what else?”

That’s all he’d say though, not another word until we got to the town. A fair sized East Midlands market town. He parked the van at a supermarket car park. The car park was at one side of the building and the town center on the other side. But we didn’t walk that way. Instead Jodi picked up his bag and went over a pedestrian bridge at the far end of the car park. The bridge was over a river which ran through the town.

I guess it doesn’t make much difference to the story but maybe I’d better mention that what might be called a river in the UK could hardly get a mention as a creek in the States. This river you could have spat across given a good following wind. Anyway we looked at Jodi’s bag, thought about the net, looked down at the river and then at each other in bewilderment. We were a bunch that had never had any interest in hunting fur, fin or feathers. big tits and juicy cunts were the only things we caught. What the hell was Jodi up to this time?

On the other side of the river was a park. A nice one. About half a mile long with lots of trees and bushes on a grassy, gently rolling slope, with the river flowing along the bottom of the slope. The only buildings we could see at the top of the slope were some changing rooms next to a fence around a couple of tennis courts. It was a nice place to come on a hot day to get away from the crowds and the traffic. Mind you any day which is warm enough to melt ice cream is a hot day for the UK, but this was a genuine scorcher.

It was about midday because the blazing sun was directly overhead and a whole slew of the town’s workers were doing all kinds of crazy continental things in their lunch hour — things like taking off their ties and pullovers and then lying down in the shade underneath the trees in the park. People with thermos flasks full of hot tea and paper bags of sandwiches were trying to convince themselves that to be seen eating outdoors wasn’t a social disgrace. And, of course, there were the wild teenagers openly sunbathing in swimming costumes, up to and including a couple of hussies in bikinis. A few more days of this brain cooking weather and the English would be lapping up rum out of each other’s belly buttons and Conga dancing in the bus queues. Mind you, with what Jodi was carrying around with him it looked as if we had one case of sun struck insanity on our hands already.

“Jodi, mate, what’s hatching in your mind?” Micky asked him. And he told us. And then he told us again, very slowly and clearly, because we thought for sure he’d been joking the first time around.

Now it wasn’t our way of doing things to have big debates about one of Jodi’s ideas. We went out and did them and scarcely ever did they go wrong, mainly because most people’s reactions just freeze up when something absolutely surprising happens. There’s hardly one in a hundred who are quick witted enough to react straight off to the totally unexpected. Mind you, it’s only one in a thousand who can think up those kind of surprising ideas, and only one in ten thousand who’ll go through with them. Jodi was the one in ten thousand.

This time though even Jodi had to work hard in selling us his plan. But Jodi was Jodi and trying to stop him doing what he wanted to do was like asking Hitler to maybe postpone invading Russia. So eventually we agreed to give it a go.

“OK, spread out. Keep in sight of each other. You know what we’re looking for. If anybody finds a good situation just sit down on the grass and the rest of us will come over and have a look.”

Looking around was the easy part. We moved out amongst the trees and the bushes like sharks prowling around in a swimming hole. Each of us knew what Jodi wanted and I hadn’t gone too far at all when I found a scene which seemed to fit the bill pretty well. So, I sat down and kept on looking.

I was about three quarters of the way up the slope, and able to see far enough over the crest for an occasional head to bob up into view behind the tennis court fence. I don’t know where the players got the energy from in that heat. On my left was a clear area of grass which stretched about a hundred yards or so to the next cluster of trees. On my right was a pathway which went up the slope towards the tennis court. The pathway was about forty or fifty yards away but nobody was bothering to use it with the grass being dry enough to walk on. A few yards further up from where I was sitting were the two trees nearest to the top of the slope, a pair of elms side by side. The trees were twenty feet apart and the furthest one from the pathway was straight up the slope from where I was.

Underneath the elm tree on the right was a courting couple with their arms wrapped each other and apparently trying to get into the Guiness book of records for the longest sustained kiss in history. I couldn’t see much of their faces but she looked pretty good. They weren’t my concern though, except in as much as neither of them were at all interested in anything else going on around them. It was the scene underneath the second tree which I was carefully studying.

There were two girls there, lying side by side, shoes off and bare feet pointing down the slope. Both of them were wearing blue overalls with buttons up the front — shop or factory uniforms. There was a coke can on the grass on either side of them and paper bags as well. Yeah, two shop girls who’d come into the park for their lunch break, and were now lying in the shade underneath the tree with their shoes off.

One was rolled over on her stomach, apparently dozing, with her hands spread flat underneath her chin, so all I could really see of her were her legs and her hair. The hair was an eye catching feature because it was a reddish brown mass which looked tangled, as if pulling a comb through it every day was more work than was worth doing. Her legs seemed pretty good and I could see halfway up her thighs because that was where the hem of her overall was pulled up to. The overall sleeves were short ones and I could make out a lot of freckles on her white skinned arms. No wonder she was keeping well out of the sun with a complexion like hers.

The other one was as different as chalk to cheese — or maybe, I should say Spanish to Irish. Because she looked as if she belonged out in the sun, a real Mediterranean type. Dark complexioned with hair as black as a coal cellar at midnight, done up in bun behind her head, and wearing sun glasses that made her look as if she was a Mafia gangster’s girl friend. Not that she wasn’t presentable, even if she did have a nose on her like Shylock’s daughter — that was more than made up for by the size of the boobs underneath her tightly stretched overall buttons. Even lying flat on her back they were a fine, fine sight. As for her legs, they were the sort that make you feel that if God ever created anything better to look at he must have kept it for himself. Unfortunately the bottom of her overalls were pulled down lower than her friend’s, around her knees, so I couldn’t give her underpinnings the attention they fully deserved.

In normal circumstances I would have moved around to have a better viewpoint up the slope and up her legs, especially as she was holding a magazine up over her face. As it was I didn’t take any sneaky looks, I didn’t move closer, I didn’t do anything which might wake the girls up or show an interest in them. Instead, I waited for the rest of the lads to arrive. The only thing which happened while I was waiting was that big tits put down the magazine and rolled over onto her stomach like her friend, resting her cheek on her hands in the same way.

“Thank you, God,” I said quietly but with genuine gratitude. It was starting to look as if he was with us on this one.

The other guys drifted over and sat around, except Jodi. He stood and looked at the girls and grinned until we were all together. As usual he didn’t seem the slightest bit nervous about things — personally, I could feel my palms getting damp and it wasn’t from the heat. I guess the truth was that if I’d been as clever as Jodi it wouldn’t have done me much good because I’d never have the nerve to follow up on my ideas the way he did. Oh, I’d do what he told me, like the others did what he told them to. The hard part was in not finding an excuse to keep on waiting for a better chance until there was no chance left and being secretly relieved. But not Jodi: he had the incredibly rare ability to just go ahead and do whatever he wanted when he wanted, without thinking twice about it.

Anyway, as soon as we were all sitting there he knelt down, unzipped the top of the bag and took out the net. He spread it out with one of the long sides uppermost and gave one end of the net to Will.

“Andy, you grab the other side. Stand up, stretch it out, then do it. I want the top of the net across their shoulder blades.”

So Will and I did. We stood up, moved apart until the eight foot net was taut and walked towards the girls, Jodi following up and handing out the paint brushes to Micky and Jacko.

“Go!”

We went for them as if we were trying to pin down a pair of leopards that could tear us apart if they got free. We threw the net over both of them, across their backs and down to their calves, and then I dropped down flat alongside the copper nob, enough of the net underneath me so I was lying completely on top of it and stopping it from moving. Will did the same thing on the other side and the net was anchored over both girls so tightly that neither could do anymore than wriggle around.

“What the fuck?” copper nob snapped, and then went into a fit of hysteria as Jacko tickled the sole of one of her bare feet with the scratchy hairs of the cut off paintbrush.

If that reaction was impressive, it was nothing compared to how big tits threw herself around when Micky did the same thing to one of her feet. It was instantly clear how susceptible she was to that sort of stimulation. The way she was twisting and giggling, I thought sure she was going to wet herself.

“OK, that’s enough,” Jodi said.

I was looking over to the other tree and saw the couple underneath it break their clinch for a moment and glance over at us, both of them grinning. They’d heard the girls having their bouts of hysteria, they could see us lying down around them and I guess they must have thought we were a bunch of friends meeting up and having a joke together. It would have been very hard for them to see the thin corded net, even if Will’s body hadn’t been in the way. So they didn’t twig what was really happening and went straight back to their marathon kissing session.

“What the fuck are you doing? Get this off us or I’ll start screaming,” copper nob said loudly.

The next second she was writhing around underneath the net again as Micky and Jacko both went for her soles with their brushes. Then Jodi told them to stop it, pointed at both pairs of feet and waggled his thumbs. The guys began massaging the girls’ soles instead of tickling them, digging their thumbs into their insteps just enough to make it pleasant rather than painful.

I heard another kind of gasp from the redhead, one of surprise, and I tried to see around her mass of hair to the face underneath it. At the same moment she twisted her head around in my direction and I was looking into her greeny colored eyes above a snub nose and pert mouth. Aye, and if looks could have killed I’d have soon been in an even warmer place. She’d got her left elbow caught up in one of the net holes and was desperately trying to get it further out but wasn’t doing anything more than leaving red impression lines on that lovely white skin. She started kicking around with her feet as well, as much as she could, then went into another fit of giggles as she was tickled again. There was a lot of things I could have said but this was the time for Jodi to do the talking. Which he did as soon as we let the copper nob alone long enough to gasp for breath.

“It’s OK girls, it’s OK. We just want to talk to you for a while and we didn’t want you getting up and walking away from us because it was time to go back to work. Relax, we’re not going to hurt you.”

“You’re absolutely mad, you can’t do this,” big tits said. “Come on, get this net off us, or else … “

“Or else what? Nobody can see it unless they get really, really close and every time you start making a noise we’ll start tickling your feet again. So why not talk about things first before you get all upset? You like having your feet massaged, don’t you?”

The red head was still spitting chips: “You’re mad, you’re fucking mad! Get this thing off us!”

“No. Nice day though, isn’t it?”

The pair of them made a concerted effort to sit up. With my weight on one side of the net and Will’s on the other they were only wasting their energy. Jodi let them struggle for a while, until copper nob started calling out. Instantly Micky and Jacko used the brushes again. I saw the couple underneath the next tree separate their lips and grin at us again as red hair and big tits made noises like a pair of mating cats. Then the pair went back to their own mating habits again. To them it was still all just larking around by a bunch of guys and a couple of chicks.

“We can keep this up as long as you like, ladies,” Jodi said calmly. “You want some more tickling or would you rather lie still and have your feet rubbed?”

“What the hell do you want?” the red head asked between gasps. She was clearly baffled about what was going on or how to deal with it.

“Ah, well, you have to understand that we’re a bunch of perverts who get our kicks out of touching girls’ feet. You wouldn’t deny us that little pleasure, would you?” Jodi’s voice was light and jokey. “After all it’s a nice feeling having your soles stroked, isn’t it?”

“But somebody might come along,” big tits protested.

“So what? Nobody is going to arrest us for obscene foot stroking in a public place, are they?”

He nodded to Micky and Jacko and they set to work again with busy hands on the bare feet in front of them. The big dark girl gave a little hiss of pleasure and we grinned at each other. The first crack in the defenses. Red hair was still whining though and it wasn’t because she was feeling happy.

“Our lunch break is over. We’ve got to go back to work now.”

“Oh no you don’t. That’s why we’ve netted you — because we couldn’t bear to see you both get up and walk away. Just tell your boss it was so hot you both fell asleep in the park and didn’t wake up until it was too late to be worth going back.”

“You’re mad; we’ll get the sack!” Her voice was rising in anger and Jodi made a painting gesture at Jacko. He immediately stopped massaging her soles and scratched her with the brush until she was laughing and begging for mercy at the same time. Jodi finally relented.

“Look, as long as you talk quietly and sensibly nothing like that is going to happen. So how about telling us your names? You with the red hair, what’s yours?”

“Maureen,” she answered, in between gasps as she tried to get her breath back from her latest encounter with the brush.

“Maureen, hey. And what’s your friend’s name?”

Big tits answered for herself: “Sandra — what’s yours?”

Jodi grinned at her challenging response. “Elvis. It’s a big coincidence, that is. Not only is my name Elvis, but all these other guys are also called Elvis. You can have our autographs by and by.”

“You’re mad; raving bloody mad. Somebody is watching this, for sure.”

Jodi leaned back on his heels and made a big performance of holding his hand flat over his eyes, pretending to scan the horizon like a cowboy on the films.

“Hmmm … Well, there’s the County Police Pipe Band over there … Mary Whitehouse has got her binoculars on us … Two Bishops and an Archdeacon next to her … oh yeah, and a TV camera from the BBC outside broadcast unit. Yes, you’re right, we’re the absolute center of attention.”

“There’s a guy and a girl under the next tree, I know that,” Sandra answered back.

“True — very true,” Jodi conceded. “Only they seem to be in a world of their own right now. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they don’t soon go back to work and leave you with us for the afternoon.”

“Look, you’ve had your joke,” Sandra said, clearly trying to sound calm and reasonable. “Now you have to take this net off us.”

“Why?” Jodi asked just as reasonably.

“Because this is crazy,” Maureen piped up. “If you don’t let us go we’ll scream … “

“Go ahead. Next time you’ll get a tickling that will really drive you crazy.”

There was a silence then as both of them tried to figure their way past that threat. Jodi only sat there and grinned at us as he let them come to terms with the way things were turning out. Maureen put her right hand down her side and clutched at the net. A total waste of time because as long as Will’s weight and mine was still resting on top of it she’d cut her fingers off on the thin nylon cords long before she could lift it up. I noticed she was wearing an engagement ring on the other hand. At the same time Sandra was still talking.

“Look, seriously, what do you lot want?”

“I told you, we just want to rub your feet. No harm in that, is there?”

Maureen said: “Fuck off, you mad bastard!”

“Oh dear, I hate foul mouthed girls. Both brushes for Maureen. Round and round the garden, like a teddy bear: one step, two step, tickle under there!”

The poor red head tried kicking her feet around and much good it did her as Mark and Jacko held her ankles and then started flicking the scratchy bristles up and down her soles. Will leaned over and dabbled his fingers behind one of her knees and I put my right hand over her back and tickled underneath her armpit. She hadn’t had too much breath left in her to start with, so all she could do was to wriggle around helplessly and suck in air in desperate gulps. I honestly thought she was going to faint.

“That’s enough,” I said. “Enough!”

“I don’t know what it is with you girls,” Jodi remarked casually. “All we’re trying to do is put a little fun in your lives and you call us all kinds of dirty names. Why not relax for a while and enjoy the sensation?”

“Go away — leave us alone!” Sandra protested.

“I’m beginning to feel like a door to door salesmen here,” Jodi told her. “Only I’m not selling anything, I’m just trying to give away a little happiness. Let’s see if some more massaging puts you in a better mood.”