The Fowler and His Net -- Prologue
Date: 12/14/2023,
Categories:
Fiction
Author: East Essex
Gary Fowler looked across the swimming pool and nodded proudly. He was the master of his own domain. True, his domain was the new tiling around the ladders, but for now, he could bask in its ownership, at least until Mrs. Barton paid for it.
He had known about Mrs. Barton for years, mostly from whispers and jokes from his former squaddies, but the first real account he had heard was from Bob the plumber. He had gesticulated about her at length in the Plough a few months before. Bob was middle aged and fat, but he told good tales and his account of trying to hide his hard-on while simultaneously trying to fix her guttering had raised the whole bar to a chaos of laughter. This incident, Gary had contemplated, was in the wintertime, when it was raining, and she was wearing a coat; exactly what kind of sexual influence did this woman possess? He had learned there was a pool up in the Grange and he had wondered when the business might get a call.
His father had deliberated over whether to send his son on this job, as the client had subtly suggested. Gary had only started in his job twelve months before, after leaving the army, but, having worked hard and apart from some talk he had heard in the pub, which he had immediately silenced, came to the conclusion that the young man could do the relatively simple job of replacing some cracked tiles, even though the request for Gary in particular was irregular, Mr. Fowler senior just assumed a partiality to fit, athletic young men ...
... on the part of the customer and, in any case, this one was important and the first real “nob” on his books. In any case, Gary was one of the “Sons” in the “Fowler & Sons” on the side of the van, and the “quality” loved that.
So it was, on a warm spring day, that Gary looked up at the high, misty sun and slowly removed his shirt. He had formulated a plan with regard to this new client, in bed with Tracey the night before. It had been part of their foreplay fantasy, after which, thus excited, he had aggressively shafted her for a quarter of an hour to put a stamp of the idea. Tracey had loved the long minutes of that stamp, and now, with Mrs. Barton appearing from the French windows onto the patio, that blithely thought-out plan was being initiated.
The sudden sight of a muscular torso in her garden stopped the upmarket little mother in her tracks; for a short moment. But after pretending to look at the roses, she continued her path toward him with that jaunty, bouncy walk that he had noticed earlier. Mrs. Barton’s large breasts seemed every bit as dramatic as Bob’s imagination had assumed and though constrained by underwear and tight jumper, mirrored her step and jumped about in a delayed and syncopated reaction.
‘It is a warm day, Mr. Fowler' she said as her approach brought her within arm’s reach. Mrs. Barton, it transpired, didn’t appear to be a great respecter of personal space.
‘Aye, it’s definitely warm' Gary replied. He wasn’t perturbed by his customer’s ...