Last Days In Cleaver Square is a novel by British novelist, Patrick McGrath. Some forty years after he returned from a stint as an ambulance driver with the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War, Francis McNulty is still living in the Cleaver Square house in which he grew up. A published poet renowned for his verse inspired by his time in Spain, he is annoyed his work-in-progress is missing.

“I was once a poet. I can’t write it now, poetry. Those rivers of imagery that, oh! – that once swept through my imagination like ancient mighty waters in flood? All long since departed”

Downstairs lives his housekeeper, Dolores Lopez, whom he saved and brought to London after her family was killed during the bombing of Madrid. His daughter Gillian, a civil servant with the Foreign Office, shares the upper floors with him, but plans to marry Sir Percy Gauss, meaning Francis will be alone again.

Perhaps it’s the news of the dying Spanish dictator, the courts martial, the executions, that cause Franco to appear: first in the street, then his beloved garden (afflicted by mildew, Francis blames the generalisimo’s foul presence), and even in his bedroom.

“Fraying dark blue sash, badly rusted medals, red tassels, gold piping, various arm-of-service insignia and crossed muskets under a double bugle with a red diamond on each collar point. Riding boots, filthy, as though he’d come through a cowshed or a military toilet. He was decrepit and unclean, he was sickly looking, falling apart, in fact, and he stank.”

Gilly is concerned when he reveals who he has seen. “She suspects I am losing my mind.” She may refer to it as an apparition, but Francis knows the dictator is really there, a ghoul he is sure that Dolores also sees, a ghoul demanding an apology.

When his older sister Finty arrives, months early for her December visit, Francis knows Gilly has been sharing her worries about him. There’s talk of selling the house, which he certainly won’t allow; they tell him “You forget things, and you make things up”, and yes, his poems are missing, he is plagued by nightmares, he sometimes gets a little confused, but moving in with his daughter and her new husband? Unthinkable!

“You are thinking of your garden, of course. Was I thinking of my garden? I was now. And when I thought of my garden I thought about blight, and the causes of blight. – I can give you a garden, Percy Gauss said. But can you give me a smelly Fascist dictator with blood on his hands who comes into my bed at night and kills all my plants and then demands an apology? I did not say this.”

Meanwhile, Francis regularly slips out across the Square to the Earl of Rochester, to chat over a gin and tonic to Hugh Supple, a journalist who is writing “a long piece for the Manchester Guardian about my experiences in Spain as a way to provide what he called a living context to the poetry.” Francis finds himself sharing details he had no intention of ever revealing, a guilty secret that has haunted him for decades.

This is very much a literary read: the prose is gorgeous, evocative and full of subtle humour (although the reason Franco demands an apology is laugh-out-loud funny); a familiarity with the Spanish Civil War might enhance the enjoyment, but is not essential; the narrator is unreliable, a rather bitter, perhaps slightly demented old man, frail but stubborn, who nonetheless draws the reader’s empathy.

Filled with sharp dialogue and wit, this is a powerful and beautifully written tale. Sadly, it loses half a star of the potential 4.5 star rating for indulging in the arrogant and annoying editorial affectation of omitting quote marks for speech, but a worthwhile read, all the same.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Random House UK