129. From the side-lines

Now that they were retired, Mary and Louisa enjoyed gallivanting. Partnerless, they relied upon each other for company and to keep costs manageable. They mixed it about, scheduling local day trips, a week here and there around their own country, together with longer journeys to favoured locations across the globe. Money would peter out sooner, rather than later, but you can’t take it with you.

Louisa was a firebrand in her own last-century way. Not that she would shout her perturbations to the rooftops, or brandish weapons of singular destruction. It was a digging in of toes, a refusal to budge. Mary, by contrast, calmed the waters. Although having a mind of her own and a readiness to strike an attitude, Mary was a classic pragmatist, preferring to make slight progress than stand still.

The friends spent many hours on small craft gliding through the backyards of other people’s lives.