Free The Human Factor by Graham Greene

to reassure Sarah, but Buller had proved inadequate as a watchdog, so now he was only one responsibility more, though with canine lack of judgement he loved Castle more than any other human being.
    The bracken was turning to the dusky gold of a fine autumn, and there were only a few flowers left on the gorse. Castle and Sam searched in vain for the rifle butts which had once stood – a red clay cliff – above the waste of Common. They were drowned now in tired greenery. ‘Did they shoot spies there?’ Sam asked.
    â€˜No, no. What gave you that idea? This was simply for rifle practice. In the first war.’
    â€˜But there are spies, aren’t there – real spies?’
    â€˜I suppose so, yes. Why do you ask?’
    â€˜I just wanted to be sure, that’s all.’
    Castle remembered how at the same age he had asked his father whether there were really fairies, and the answer had been less truthful than his own. His father had been a sentimental man; he wished to reassure his small son at any cost that living was worth while. It would have been unfair to accuse him of dishonesty: a fairy, he might well have argued, was a symbol which represented something which was at least approximately true. There were still fathers around even today who told their children that God existed.
    â€˜Spies like 007?’
    â€˜Well, not exactly.’ Castle tried to change the subject. He said, ‘When I was a child I thought there was a dragon living here in an old dug-out down there among those trenches.’
    â€˜Where are the trenches?’
    â€˜You can’t see them now for the bracken.’
    â€˜What’s a dragon?’
    â€˜You know – one of those armoured creatures spitting out fire.’
    â€˜Like a tank?’
    â€˜Well, yes, I suppose like a tank.’ There was a lack of contact between their two imaginations which discouraged him. ‘More like a giant lizard,’ he said. Then he realized that the boy had seen many tanks, but they had left the land of lizards before he was born.
    â€˜Did you ever see a dragon?’
    â€˜Once I saw smoke coming out of a trench and I thought it was the dragon.’
    â€˜Were you afraid?’
    â€˜No, I was afraid of quite different things in those days. I hated my school, and I had few friends.’
    â€˜Why did you hate school? Will I hate school? I mean real school.’
    â€˜We don’t all have the same enemies. Perhaps you won’t need a dragon to help you, but I did. All the world hated my dragon and wanted to kill him. They were afraid of the smoke and the flames which came out of his mouth when he was angry. I used to steal out at night from my dormitory and take him tins of sardines from my tuck-box. He cooked them in the tin with his breath. He liked them hot.’
    â€˜But did that really happen?’
    â€˜No, of course not, but it almost seems now as though it had. Once I lay in bed in the dormitory crying under the sheet because it was the first week of term and there were twelve endless weeks before the holidays, and I was afraid of – everything around. It was winter, and suddenly I saw the window of my cubicle was misted over with heat. I wiped away the steam with my fingers and looked down. The dragon was there, lying flat in the wet black street, he looked like a crocodile in a stream. He had never left the Common before because every man’s hand was against him – just as I thought they were all against me. The police even kept rifles in a cupboard to shoot him if he ever came to town. Yet there he was, lying very still and breathing up at me big warm clouds of breath. You see, he had heard that school had started again and he knew I was unhappy and alone. He was more intelligent than any dog, much more intelligent than Buller.’
    â€˜You are pulling my leg,’ Sam said.
    â€˜No, I’m just remembering.’
    â€˜What happened then?’
    â€˜I made a