The Human Barnacle: A Tale of Two Moralities

By Helen Mannion

A child of the 1970s Permissive Society, Tuesday Penrose is truly a Human Barnacle. She attaches herself to a rock of security ensuring financial freedom, and waits for the high tide of human plankton. Ensnaring a new man every night, her appetite is voracious, depraved. She is immoral and amoral in equal measure and knows the meaning of neither word.

Deploring the excesses of the Permissive Society, the traditional social fabric is under assault. For many, Tuesday exemplifies the rampant libertine excesses of the unfettered young generation. But set against this New Wave, life in the wider world continued. In the South Pacific, a luxury hotel in the Maldives is destroyed by a tsunami. Guests and staff are transferred to the partner hotel in Nauru. The most recent staff appointment is barmaid Tuesday Penrose, and here the Human Barnacle is confronted by the established values.

When even exorcism by the priest Carolingus fails to rid Tuesday of her demons, it is up to a most unlikely reformed reprobate, Macedonian brigand Konstantin Kolper, to show Tuesday an alternative freedom. It is a Battle Royal and the demons within fight expulsion with all their force. Tuesdays future and her fate hang in the balance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Nov 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504994576

Helen Mannion

Helen Mannion is a social historian specialising in the latter half of the 20th century in Britain. Born in 1950, she had first-hand experience of the social turmoil created post-1968 by the growth of the Permissive Society. In this novel, she juxtaposes the post-World War II social fabric and the massive upheaval of the 1968 student revolution and its consequences throughout Europe. The “all rights, no responsibilities” libertine excesses of the 1970s were deplored by an inundated, uncomprehending 1950s mentality society which saw the unstoppable advance of a tsunami of moral depravity. All this is set in the context of a bankrupt UK and the world living in fear of thermo-nuclear extinction of all life on the planet. Helen Mannion is a contemporary of author John Trethewey. They have been close friends for over fifty years, ever since they sat side by side in their village primary school. With her friend’s permission, Helen Mannion has incorporated some characters from her friend’s novels in “The Human Barnacle”.

Book preview

Prologue

On a bitterly cold day in March 1959 Professor Wroote strode from Portsmouth station towards the Oceanographic Institute. The fog was creeping in from the sea and although it was only three in the afternoon the grey sky seemed to be menacing nightfall. He arrived at the Gate House to the Institute, built as a miniature copy of Keble in Oxford, even down to the cloister with Halls on all sides and scores of chimneys serving a coal fire in each student’s room. He walked into the arched passage and rang the bell by the Porter’s window. The Porter was new. He hurried out carrying a clip board with visitors’ names.

‘Your name, sir, please?’ The professor, irritated by his ulcer and accustomed to being waved through by one of the regular staff, gave a testy monosyllabic response. The doorman ran his eye down the list of names starting with R, then looked up, perplexed.

‘How do you spell that, sir?’ Wroote was chilled from the walk and wanted to be indoors.

‘Six letters.’ This did not help the doorman one jot.

‘Euh…?’

‘Starts with W and ends with E!’ His voice was loud with exasperation.

‘Ah, yes sir I have it. You’re in the Lecture Hall. Shall I show you the way, Mister Wurooti?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous man! I lecture here every Tuesday afternoon, have done for thirty years!’ His voice was stentorian, a mixture of ulcer and cold feet. ‘I’ll make my own way to the Aula.’

The doorman was more at a loss than ever.

‘Euh… owl what, sir?’

Wroote strode along a gloomy corridor that smelt strongly of floor polish. He entered the long, dark Lecture Hall by a side door close to the Victorian lectern. He hadn’t used notes for years so he moved to stand beside it and surveyed the twenty students sitting in the front two rows. Students notoriously prefer the seats right at the back, but Wroote’s legendary soft voice, often falling to a whisper, necessitated maximum proximity. Had they heard Wroote sounding off at the doorman they would have seen through the ruse, a calculated technique developed over the years to ensure that he could actually see his students. He recognised those who attended most frequently, readily identifiable by their musty tweed jackets that were almost on a par with his own chalk-stained suit.

‘Good afternoon.’ He was almost inaudible.

‘Afternoon, Prof!’ The unison answer in chorus was deafening in comparison.

‘Well, today we shall tackle some crustaceans. We’ll start with the barnacle before moving on to more flamboyant examples.’ He looked severe and his voice rose surprisingly. ‘I must mention that when I treated this with last year’s group, I was interrupted several times by vulgar, salacious giggles and sniggers.

‘Why anyone should find the manner in which a barnacle satisfies its appetite amusing is quite beyond me. I shall not tolerate any repeat of that deplorable behaviour.

‘Now, the barnacle… the barnacle attaches its back, yes, its back, to a rock in shallow sea water to serve as a solid support and base on and from which to live. Protected by an impenetrable carapace it is impregnable, uncaring and unheeding of all around. It is an unfeeling creature. Unheeding and uncaring except for one thing: plentiful prey. Now you might think that the unprotected belly is a sure point of weakness if larger shellfish, its predators, attack. Not so.

‘At low tide, when the water level drops, leaving the barnacle high and dry, the carapace around the entire body remains firmly shut, its one orifice protected by two plates which close firmly, enclosing the body in solid armour. It has no Achilles’ heel. However, as the tide rises, copious quantities of plankton and grains of detritus pass over the barnacle, around it, even remaining briefly on the shell. At high water the two plates across the orifice open wide, and two seemingly futile legs are extended. These, surprisingly long in comparison to the small body mass of the carapace, rather like jelly fish tentacles, appear to sway harmlessly, uselessly in the ebb and flow of the water around the rock. Nothing could be further from the truth.’

Now the students were scribbling notes. None of them had envisaged this surprisingly informative detail.

‘As unwitting plankton drift in on the high tide, the barnacle’s long legs extend and open wide before firmly gripping the prey. Captured irrevocably between these extensions, the plankton is drawn into the orifice which serves to satisfy hunger. Plentiful supplies of fodder are ingested between open legs. And the barnacle is rapacious, never satisfied.’

Despite the Professor’s warning a ripple of suppressed laughter ran through the listeners. He appeared not to notice.

‘Then, as the tide recedes and the water level falls below the barnacle’s rock of security, the plates close once again across the orifice, and the barnacle waits patiently for the next high tide of plankton.’

One of the students was sketching an obscene picture of a girl on her back, legs wide apart. Under it he scribbled Human barnacle, and handed it to his friend, who had to cover his mouth to stifle a laugh. Still Wroote continued.

‘In brief, then, the barnacle exists lying on its back in the security of attachment to a solid rock, and satisfies its insatiable appetite between wide open legs.’ Now he became aware of a tacit ribaldry in his audience. He sighed. ‘Perhaps you will find eight-legged crabs more interesting…’

The abandoned barnacle

Chapter One

Late at night on that same day in March 1959 a muffled, slender and petite figure made her way uncertainly along a pavement in South London. Her uncertainty was not only due to her not knowing her precise destination. The yellow smog that smothered the entire metropolis was nearly impenetrable, visibility down to ten yards before the swirling yellow paste of fog closed in; beyond that it was zero. She stopped beneath a feeble street lamp and clasped the small bundle of rags in her arms closer to her breast. She heard the approaching double decker London bus long before she saw its headlights. The driver was advancing at only ten miles an hour, peering optimistically through his broad windscreen. There came the improbable sound of a car horn from behind the bus and a beetle shaped Morris 8 overtook the omnibus at reckless speed on the wrong side of the road before continuing at an unwise pace. The bus braked on seeing Kathryn, the driver thinking she wanted to board. She had not realised that she was at a bus stop. The conductor, standing on the step of the open door, looked at her questioningly. She shook her head, and the conductor rang the bell twice. The bus ground into gear and limped away, leaving her alone under the pale streetlamp.

She coughed, the vile mixture of moisture and tar invading her lungs. In the light from the lamp she saw myriad countless droplets of water in suspension. Her face and hands were moist with the sticky humidity. The windows of a terraced house giving onto the pavement were lit, the curtains drawn. She looked upwards. From the house chimney, from the chimney of every house in the long terrace, smoke was drifting silently upwards, the product of coal and coke fires in every living room. But she was not here to find a roof for herself. The bundle in her arms stirred and made a faint noise, the squeak of an uncomprehending infant. She continued on her way through the ghastly soup of yellow murk.

Almost immediately she saw what she had been looking for, the high stone portal of a Victorian building with lights on in several windows. The engraved stone over the doorway read St. Mathilda’s Hospital. She started to cry silently. She laid the bundle in her arms on the ground in front of the illuminated glass doors. Then she pressed the bell, many times, before hurrying back the way she had come. By the time the receptionist had opened the door and found the babe in swaddling clothes at his feet, Kathryn had long since vanished into the smog.

She was hurrying now, tears streaming down her young face. They were not the result of the tar-filled, choking yellow windless air that enveloped her and obstructed her breathing; they were tears of misery. She had just given away the most precious of Nature’s gifts, the gift of life.

During the baby’s short stay at St. Mathilda’s the police and the social services made enquiries throughout South London. They were fruitless. After a week the baby was transferred to a social services establishment before being sent to an orphanage at the age of 6 months. The hospital staff had named her Tuesday, because she had been found on a Tuesday night. It was as good a name as any.

Six months later Tuesday was adopted by a childless couple with their home in South Clapham, John and Judith Penrose. John Penrose was a teacher in a Public school, his wife a nurse. They seemed the ideal couple as adoptive parents. Sadly, things were to prove that not to be the case.

By the age of 11, Tuesday had already run away from home twice, albeit briefly. She sucked her thumb at home and in public, which infuriated both her adoptive parents. She stole petty cash in coins from the high cupboard in the living room when her parents were in the bathroom or making the beds. She lied constantly, transparent fibs that were seemingly harmless. Unfortunately they were just one more indicator of a deeply disturbed little girl. At least, Judith Penrose would say to try to calm her irascible husband, she doesn’t bite her nails.

Nightly enuresis at the age of eleven is quite enough. he had replied. I’ve decided. We can’t keep her here like this. She’s eleven, failed the eleven plus miserably. We’ll send her to Tetracombe boarding school, I know the Headmaster. He had fought to hold back tears. Upstairs, oblivious to life-changing decisions being made for her, Tuesday was reading a children’s Enid Blyton novel by torchlight under the blankets. Judith Penrose reached across the space between their armchairs before the hearth.

That’s very heartless, John. She gulped. What has happened to you? To us? What is happening to her?

All I know, grunted John Penrose, is that she’s turning my heart to stone. He dabbed at the tears moistening his cheeks. And we tried so hard, so very hard, Judith. He put down his mug of cocoa. I’ll sleep in the spare room tonight. he said. Judith gasped in shock, unaware that Tuesday’s impetuous, wayward and undisciplined behaviour over the years had effectively castrated her husband, robbing him permanently of any family desire.

John! Please! Don’t leave me alone, not tonight… There was a catch in her voice. John Penrose stood up and moved to the living room door.

You don’t understand. he said in a flat, lifeless tone. I’ve spent twenty years educating young teenagers, guiding them along the path to adulthood, to responsible parenthood, to a successful career… And all the while, I’m just a joke. A mockery of Mr. Chips. I’ve decided. We’ll let Tetracombe have a go at salvaging whatever remains to be saved. I’m going to bed. I’ll bring you your tea in the morning.

He had left the room without even saying Good Night.

In hindsight, it was not Tetracombe School’s fault that things could not be salvaged. Equally with hindsight, John Penrose’s greatest error had been in sending Tuesday to a co-educational school of 200 pupils. It was a recipe for disaster.

Initially, upon her arrival at Tetracombe, Tuesday who was very petite with Scandinavian golden blonde hair, made a very good impression on the other new pupils. The teachers, all experienced at inducting children into the complex routine and society of a small, enclosed boarding school, habitually held back in any assessment. Sadly, neither the early popularity among Tuesday’s peers nor the staff restraint in coming to a firm opinion lasted long.

Strangely, from her very first night at Tetracombe the bed-wetting stopped entirely. It would have needed a child psychiatrist to explain this sudden change for the better.

The other girls called her Barbie. The boys studiously ignored all the little girls of their age. But at 13 things happen. It is called puberty, the gateway to adolescence. Any parent who has seen this phenomenon does not need it explaining, and for those who have not, it would be an unkind exegesis.

At thirteen many girls grow through a pudgy, puppy-fat phase. More than a few pre-adolescents have ruefully observed their young reflections in a mirror and hated what they saw there, unaware that this is a short lived transit that often leads to blossoming beauty. Tuesday was the exception to the rule. She grew very slowly in stature, but she did not put on any dreaded puppy fat pudginess. On the contrary, her height remained petite, and even in adulthood she never grew taller than five foot two inches. But this was more than compensated for in her view in the mirror of an incipient, full-bodied figure. Any friendship towards her from girls of her age rapidly started to evaporate.

Emotionally and mentally Tuesday was not precocious. Not yet. But physically she was inexplicably advanced beyond her years. And it was this unusually early onset of femininity which dragged emotional and mental precocity forwards at a disastrous rate. Now the boys started to take notice of Barbie, bringing her attention and appreciation which her teachers, with the best will in the world, could not award her for schoolwork.

At the age of fourteen, in the dark and dusty school Book Store, it started with kissing, then cuddling and couching on a coat on the floor. It was a small step to advance to the next, irrevocable event. It did not satisfy her, but that was not down to the dusty little room, unromantic in the extreme. The poor boy had simply been totally out of his depth. And out of his league. It destroyed his self-confidence and within months he had developed a stammer and was bottom of the class in everything. Barbie’s father had been the first man that she destroyed; the trail of destruction that lay ahead would devastate many a man.

Increasingly her girl-friends, a misnomer if ever there was one, viewed her as a slut, and shunned her. The boys thought much the same but few shied away, to their cost. At an early age Tuesday became immune to girls’ opprobrium and learned to twist men adeptly round her little finger.

Now Barbie started to inhabit the Book Store in her free time, even proudly announcing to teachers that she was tidying it up and sorting the hundreds of books into order. In fact, she never touched a single book. She rarely went out. There was an ample supply of plankton queuing up to be devoured between her barnacle’s legs, and satisfy her insatiable appetite.

By the age of sixteen Tuesday was an expert in Coital Rites and many were the willing seeking initiation. Few, however, satisfied her sufficiently. A chemist provided her with an over-the-counter little known contraceptive, Rendells. A year later she went a step too far. The Librarian entered the Book Store unexpectedly and found Tuesday naked in the arms of the school gardener. The next day the school Matron accompanied Tuesday from the West Country to London and delivered her to the door of her adoptive parents’ house. Her mother came to the door, red-eyed and carrying two small suitcases.

‘John says you can’t stay here. Not tonight, not ever. We’re going to a guest house in Clapham Common for the night. Just you and I.’ Tuesday stared up at her in disbelief.

‘He’s throwing me out?’ Her shock was audible and visible. Her mother nodded, already pulling her along the pavement towards the Tube station. She was crying and unable to wipe away the tears as she was carrying a suitcase in each hand. The event and the date were burning themselves indelibly on her memory: Monday March 22nd, 1976.

The room in the guest house was a twin bedded room with a sink in the corner and bathroom and toilet on the corridor outside. Tuesday had still not spoken a word, wishing that her mother would stop the never-ending inane chatter which flowed freely from her torn emotions.

‘Don’t unpack anything.’ her mother choked, placing the suitcases on the floor. ‘We’ll be leaving first thing.’

‘And now?’ Tuesday spoke for the first time, strangely divided between seventeen years of taking the adoptive parents for granted and a tidal wave of new freedom washing over her future. Without them.

Mrs. Penrose checked that the envelope she had put in her handbag was there and opened the bedroom door.

‘We’ll go to the Wimpy Café at Clapham Common station.’ said Mrs. Penrose. ‘Then we’ll go to the pub. And please don’t lie to me by saying you’ve never had a drink before, because that would make this even worse for me. Actually, I don’t see how it could get any worse!’ She sniffed. ‘Come on.’

It was in the pub that Mrs. Penrose made the last mistake of the many that had gone before in Tuesday’s upbringing. It was a well-intentioned, final maternal gesture of support for her adopted daughter and of defiance to her embittered husband. But it was to backfire badly. With drinks served she opened her handbag and gave Tuesday a large brown envelope.

‘I’d meant to give you this in the morning,’ she started, ‘but… oh, Tuesday… it’s burning a hole in my handbag. Here!’ She gave the large envelope to the daughter she expected never to see again. Tuesday took it, emptied the contents on her lap. Mrs. Penrose went to the bar for new drinks.

Tuesday opened the first document; it was her birth certificate, testifying to the fact that father’s name and mother’s name were Unknown. She neatly folded the certificate and opened her passport inside which she found a London Underground pass for the whole Tube network for one month. At the bar Mrs. Penrose lifted the drinks and turned to join Tuesday. Seeing her studying the documents she put the drinks down again and watched. Tuesday turned to the last of the contents, ten bank notes, a hundred pounds. She had never seen so much money; weekly pocket money