Barnsford Zoo opened its doors to the public at ten o’clock on Tuesday morning, but business was slow. Joe stood on the corner of the site and watched at a distance. Whenever a car appeared, it immediately drove into one of his neatly painted spaces, now dry, which at least gave him a degree of confidence. He carried out the same routine for the next three days, and discovered the pattern didn’t vary. But then, the British are a nation who believe in queues, and behaving in an orderly fashion.
On December 31 and January 1 and 2, Joe went back to work, and he and Molly celebrated the New Year having painted twenty parking spaces.
“Quite enough,” declared Molly, “because you’ve still got to find out if the public will wear it.”
Joe rose at six o’clock the next morning, put on his old council parking attendant’s uniform, and collected one of his father’s discarded ticket collecting machines from the shed.
He took a bus to the site, and was standing on the parking lot long before the zoo opened for business. He patrolled his twenty spaces like a lion protecting its cubs, and when his first potential customer appeared, he walked tentatively over to a man who had parked in one of the spaces.
“Good morning, sir,” said Joe. “That will be two shillings.” If the man had told him to bugger off, he would have done just that, but he meekly handed over a florin.
“Thank you, sir,” said Joe, issuing him with a ticket before touching his peaked cap. His first customer.
By the end of the day, he’d had fourteen customers, and collected one pound and eight shillings, more than he earned in a week working for the council. By the end of the first week, he’d pocketed £31, and took Molly out for a drink at the pub, where they shared a Scotch egg.
Joe wanted to splash out and go to the Swan, where you could get a three-course meal and a half bottle of wine for £3, but Molly wouldn’t hear of it, saying, “It will only make folks suspicious, and give the game away.” She even introduced him to the words “cash flow.”
On the Monday, when the zoo was closed, Joe could have taken a day off, but instead, he labored away, painting another six spaces, and as each day passed, the rectangles increased along with his income, causing him to grow more and more confident. However, it was on the Tuesday of the third week that he saw Mr. Turner, the zoo manager, heading toward him and assumed the game was up.
“Morning, Mr....?”
“Joe,” he said.
“Could we have a private word, Joe?”
“Yes, of course, Mr. Turner.”
“When I’ve parked here in the past,” said the zoo manager, “I’ve never had to pay.”
“And you won’t have to in the future, Mr. Turner,” said Joe.
“But now the council’s taken over the site, surely I’ll be expected—”
“You won’t be expected to pay a penny, Mr. Turner. In fact I’m going to allocate you your own private space, that no one else will be able to park in.”
“Won’t the council kick up a fuss?”
“I won’t say anything if you don’t,” said Joe, touching his nose.
“That’s good of you, Joe,” said Turner. “Let me know if I can ever do anything for you.”
Joe selected the space directly opposite the entrance to the zoo and spent the rest of the day carefully painting the words ZOO MANAGER ONLY.
When Molly left her job at Mason’s to have the baby, Joe suggested she handle the cash and keep the books.
Molly also opened a bank account with Barclays, and paid in just over £20 a week, the average wage for a council parking attendant, and placed the rest of the cash under a floorboard in their bedroom.
Although Molly kept the books in apple pie order, even she had to take some time off when Joe Junior was born. His birth only gave the proud father the incentive to paint even more spaces, and within a year, all 120 slots were in place, with a special area reserved for coaches.
When the time came for Molly to return to work, she didn’t go back to Mason’s, but joined Joe officially as his bookkeeper and secretary. She paid herself £25 a week. However, it didn’t help the cash flow problem, as they had to take up more and more floorboards, but she was already working on how to deal with that particular problem.
It was Molly who suggested that the time had come for them to take a trip to Macclesfield.
“Macclesfield wouldn’t be my first choice for a holiday,” said Joe.
“We’re not going on holiday,” said Molly, “just a day trip. If you look at your father’s latest ticket machine, you’ll see who the manufacturer is, and I think it’s time we paid them a visit.”
As the zoo was always closed on a Monday, Molly borrowed a van from Mr. Mason and the three of them set off for Macclesfield. The showroom turned out to be a treasure trove of uniforms, machines, and all the other accessories any self-respecting car park attendant needed to do his job. Joe ended up acquiring two outfits (summer and winter) with ZOO printed on the shoulder, the latest collecting machine, a peaked cap, and a small enamel badge that announced SUPERVISOR, which he couldn’t resist, although Molly wasn’t at all sure about it. Her only acquisitions were a large bookkeeper’s ledger and a filing cabinet.
It was on the way back to Barnsford that Molly dropped two bombshells. “I’m pregnant again,” she said, “but at least the council have finally offered us a house.”
“But I thought you didn’t want to live in a council house, and in any case we’ve got enough cash to put down a deposit on a bungalow on the Woolwich estate,” said Joe.
“Can’t risk it,” said Molly. “If we did that, folks might start gossiping and wonder how you earned that sort of money as a car park attendant, and don’t forget, most people think I’m still out of work.”
“But what’s the point of making all this money, if we can’t enjoy it?” demanded Joe.
“Don’t worry yourself. I have plans for that too.”
Six months later, Mr. and Mrs. Simpson, Joe Jr., and Janet moved into their council house on the Keir Hardie estate. While folks might have thought their new neighbors were living in a council house, if they’d ever been invited inside they would have discovered the Simpsons weren’t doing their shopping at the Co-op, but then they never were invited inside.
And as well as tufted carpets, a space-age kitchen, a large-screen TV, and a three-piece suite that wasn’t bought on the never-never, they still had a cash flow problem. But Joe felt confident Molly would come up with a solution.
“We won’t be going to Blackpool for our summer holiday this year,” she announced over breakfast one morning.
“Then where are we going, Mum?” demanded Joe Jr.
“Don’t speak with your mouth full,” said Molly. “We’re going to Majorca.”
Joe wanted to ask “Where’s that?” but was rescued by Janet, who asked the same question.
“It’s an island in the Mediterranean, which not many people from Barnsford will have heard of, and are even more unlikely to visit,” which seemed to silence all three of them.
Joe and Molly always took their holiday in the zoo’s quietest fortnight of the year, and as the day approached, the children became more and more excited, because it would be their first trip on a plane. Joe’s and Molly’s too, come to that, but they didn’t mention it.
To do Joe justice, it was his idea to employ a bright university student, preferably an immigrant, to cover for him whenever he was away on holiday. He always paid the lad in cash, and although he didn’t make much of a profit during that fortnight, the regulars were kept happy, and there were never any questions about why the car park wasn’t manned.