Never to Love by Anne Weale Page A

provincial paper and were still close friends.
    Andrea studied Mr. Brennan with interest as she remembered his brilliant dispatches from the front line in Korea and his reports from Kenya when the Mau Mau uprisings began. More recently he had covered the terrorist activities in Cyprus and the Suez crisis.
    She had visualized him as a tough, hard-bitten man with a forceful personality and blunt manners, but he was nothing like this preconception. Tall and too thin for his height, he had a lankiness reminiscent of an overgrown schoolboy. His fair hair was bleached almost white by the Middle East sun and his deep sunburn accentuated the blueness of his eyes. He did not look at all like a man who spent his life in the world’s trouble spots, writing trenchant commentaries on the cause and outcome of international dissension. If she had passed him in the street she would have thought he was a lawyer or doctor or scientist, certainly not an itinerant journalist.
    Presently Nick went into the kitchen to help Jill finish getting the supper and the other two were left alone, Andrea sewing hooks and eyes on the last chair cover and Simon Brennan sitting on a packing case watching her.
    “Do you mind if I smoke?” he asked.
    “Not at all.”
    He produced a stained corncob pipe and began to fill it from an old oilskin pouch.
    “What do you do for a living?” he inquired.
    “I used to be a fashion model until I married.”
    “Your husband’s the sensible type who believes a woman’s place is in the home, is he?” When he smiled the fine lines of his eyes crinkled and two deep clefts formed in his thin cheeks.
    “I don’t really know. The question of carrying on with my career didn’t arise. I should think he probably is. Do you disapprove of wives going out to work?”
    He laughed. “I disapprove of work. If I had a couple of thousand pounds put by for my old age, I’d find a quiet cove in a warm climate and settle down to beachcombing for the next twenty years.”
    She snipped a thread and looked up at him. “Wouldn’t that get a bit boring after a while?”
    “I don’t think so. Most people’s lives are boring anyway. The only time they really come alive is for two short weeks a year when they can forget about scraping a living and do as they please.”
    “Mmm, that’s true up to a point, I suppose. But your job isn’t a humdrum one. You aren’t tied to an office desk or a factory bench, going through the same monotonous routine day after day.”
    He lighted his pipe and when it was drawing satisfactorily, said, “Come to that, your job must have been pretty easy. I’ve never understood why girls should get fat fees for dressing up and posing for pictures.”
    Andrea opened her mouth to repudiate this, caught his eye and smiled.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “I used to get terribly cross with people who thought modeling was money for jam. Now I’m doing the same thing myself. I’m afraid I don’t know much about journalism, but I suppose it has drawbacks like everything else. What are the worst ones?”
    He shrugged. “Living in hotels. Having to move on just as one’s getting settled. Seeing things that should be splashed across the front page but won’t even get into small print for various reasons. Missing meals to catch editions. Spending your life chasing nine-day wonders.” And yet, she thought, he looks such a relaxed person. One can’t imagine him getting worked up and irritable. Aloud, she said, “Are you married?”
    “If I were I wouldn’t be cadging meals. No, marriage doesn’t fit in with a roving commission, and since I don’t know any other way of earning money I reckon I’m doomed to be a crusty old bachelor.”
    “Couldn’t you get a job like Nick’s?”
    “I could, but I wouldn’t care for it. What I said now about moving around being a drawback wasn’t altogether true. After a while the travel bug gets under your skin. Too long in one place and you begin to feel