Jeremy Clarke Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 1 August 2019

Nine-year-old Oscar is a mentor to eight-year-old Lucas

My grandson Oscar (nine) shares a bedroom with his cousin Lucas (eight) and sits next to him at school. Before this year, for one tragic reason and another, Lucas hadn’t been to school for two years. So Oscar has been mentoring him in mathematics and spelling and before they go to sleep reads to him. (At the moment they’re reading Stig of the Dump.) Last week, on the final day of the school year, Lucas was given the Star Pupil of the Year award. Oscar cried.

To reward them for their combined efforts I handed out cash and took them last week to Dartmoor Prison museum, situated within the grimly massive granite walls of the old prison dairy, for a treat. The bloke taking the money was a prison officer and a Scot. As we approached his counter, he leaned over and clapped Lucas in a pair of cast-iron mid-19th-century handcuffs and promised to return him to us after a fortnight.

Lucas is small for his age, inhabits a world of his own making, and mumbles. When coaxed out of his imaginary world and into the real one, however, he makes ridiculously definitive, adult statements about it, which I suppose compensates him for the appalling uncertainties of his infancy. ‘Can you make it a month, please?’ I said. Lucas easily slipped his hand out of the manacle and glided away to inspect a foot-high model of Notre Dame cathedral made of spent matches.

The officer hadn’t yet finished whetting our appetites for what lay ahead. Now he set aside the heavy cuffs and came at Oscar with a sword. And what a sword. The no-frills design combined practicality with maximum brutality. It was short — about 18 inches long — with a slightly curved blade and a knuckle guard.

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