Father Consett
An Irish priest from the Liverpool slums, on holiday at a German spa, who has known Sylvia Tietjens since she was nine and is not fooled by her.
To stop Sylvia Tietjens doing what he can see she is about to do. He offers her a retreat, he argues, and when neither works he tells her mother privately what he thinks is coming.
The book
At a glance
- Roman Catholic priest, working in the slums of Liverpool; on his annual holiday
- Lobscheid, a small German spa in the Taunus pinewoods, in Part One only
- Sylvia since she was nine; he loved her father like a brother
- Bridge, hard, for the fortnight a year he gets it
- Holy water, in his pistol pocket
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeFather Consett works in the slums of Liverpool and gets three weeks off a year, which he spends playing bridge with Sylvia Tietjens' mother at a small German spa. He has an enormous mouth, dirty hands, a broad face and a laugh like a fairground organ; the narration says outright that he is a saint. He loved Sylvia's father like a brother and has known Sylvia since she was a child.
He appears in one chapter and casts a shadow over the rest of the book. He tries to reach Sylvia, fails, threatens her with holy water when she tells him what she means to do, and then, once she has gone, tells her mother the one thing he would not say in front of her.
How the book draws them
- The saint at the card tableBridge is his one indulgence and he plays it for a fortnight a year at speed, hurrying to finish a rubber before midnight because he is to say mass in the morning and must be fasting.
- The talkA brogue so thick the book says you seldom hear it outside old novels of Irish life, used for jokes and then, without changing gear, for things nobody else in the room will say out loud.
- The holy waterWhen Sylvia says she can always drive her husband mad by corrupting the child, he tells her he keeps a bottle of holy water in his pistol pocket for occasions like this one. She goes to bed.
- The prophecyAlone with her mother afterwards, he says the thing he would not say to Sylvia's face: her hell on earth will come when her husband goes running, head down, mad after another woman. The rest of the novel is that sentence coming true.
- The teaHaving spent the evening on the state of a soul, he remembers at the end of it that he drank the tea and so cannot say his mass in the morning. It is the last thing he does on the page.
Father Consett never appears again. Years later, in the middle of an argument about who should teach their son, Christopher Tietjens gropes for the name of the best man he ever met and cannot retrieve it — his memory is damaged — and when he finally has it, It is delivered in passing, in two sentences.