The Singing Butler

The Singing Butler
It struck Lucy that there was something strangely forlorn about Bryan Eastley. Looking closely at him, she realised that he was older than she had at first thought. He must be close on forty. It seemed difficult to think of him as Alexander's father. He reminded her of innumerable young pilots she had known during the war when she had been at the impressionable age of fourteen. She had gone on and grown up into a postwar world - but she felt as though Bryan had not gone on, but had been passed by in the passage of years. His next words confirmed this. He had subsided on to the kitchen table again.
The Singing Butler
It's a difficult sort of world, he said, isn't it? To get your bearings in, I mean. You see, one hasn't been trained for it.
Lucy recalled what she had heard from Emma."
"You were a fighter pilot, weren't you?" she said. "You've got a D.F.C."
"That's the sort of thing that puts you wrong. You've got a gong and so people try to make it easy for you. Give you a job and all that. Very decent of them. But they're all admin jobs, and one simply isn't any good at that sort of thing. Sitting at a desk getting tangled up in figures. I've had ideas of my own, you know, tried out a wheeze or two. But you can't get the backing. Can't get the chaps to come in and put down the money. If I had a bit of capital
The Singing Butler