The Best of Sisters by Dilly Court

subletting rooms. Beattie Larkin was old, at least twenty-five, Eliza thought, and she had disliked her on sight. Beattie lived in the back room with her four little boys, aged from five down to the six-month-old baby, and it seemed to Eliza that she was always hanging round Freddie, fluttering her sandy eyelashes and making sheep’s-eyes at him. He was unfailingly charming in response to these clumsy attempts to seduce him, but Eliza did not believe that he could be interested in such a slatternly trollop of a woman. He was, she thought, too much of a gent to hurt Beattie’s feelings, if she had any. For two pins she would tell her to lay off pestering a professional gentleman and go and practise her charms on Basher Harris, the stevedore who lived in the upstairs back bedroom with his aged mother, who was very deaf.
    In the front bedroom there was a whole family of Italians who made ice cream, calling it hokey-pokey and selling it for a halfpenny a lump. The Donatiellos were numerous, noisy and excitable and there seemed to be dozens of them all living in one room, laughing, quarrelling, singing and gabbling away in Italian. There was the mommaand poppa, nonna and six children: how they all fitted into one small room Eliza could not begin to imagine, but they did, and all seemed none the worse for it. The two eldest sons, Carlo and Guido, were big, dark and handsome young men; Eliza thought that Beattie would do better with one of them than casting her eye in Freddie’s direction. At least if she hooked one of the Italians, she would have plenty of pasta and ice cream with which to feed her scrawny little nippers.
    In the beginning, Freddie instructed Eliza in how to make up some of the potions that he sold from his suitcase. First there was the blood purifier that had worked such wonders for Dolly, and this was made by steeping dried sassafras leaves in water, then sweetening the strained liquid with burnt sugar and pear juice. There was salve, concocted from goose grease and turpentine and fragranced with lavender oil, which could be used for treating anything from chapped hands to burns. There were cough drops made from boiled sugar, honey and lemon juice, and pills recommended for anything from gout to dropsy that were simply pellets of chalk coated with sugar. Flowers of sulphur were packed into small boxes and sold with cardboard tubes so that the yellow powder could be blown into the open mouth of those afflicted with sore throats. There was quinine for fevers and laudanum to soothe pain.
    Eliza was well aware that some of the medicines were sheer hocus-pocus and that it was Freddie’s convincing patter that sold them, but she had witnessed Dolly’s miraculous cure brought about by taking the blood purifier. She could not be certain whether this was as magical at it had seemed, or whether it had worked simply because Dolly had believed that it would.
    When they started out on the streets Eliza was nervous and unsure of herself, simply handing out the bottles, phials and pillboxes, but as her confidence grew, she became bolder and was ready to supplement Freddie’s sales patter with confirmatory remarks as to the efficacy of his nostrums. They usually worked alone, leaving Millie in the care of Dolly, who had really taken to the child and took pleasure in her company. Dolly’s cure, if it were such, had led to her taking in a few orders for sewing as well as renewing her interest in all things domestic. Freddie only brought Millie in as the ailing child, to be miraculously cured by a single sip of his patent medicine, the Cure-All, when they worked the markets. He would set up his suitcase on a wooden stand with Eliza at his side and Millie mingling with the crowd. Then, if things were not selling well, he would pick Millie out of the audience, seemingly at random, and bring her to the front. Her cheeks, which had filled out a little and become rosy with good food and Dolly’sloving care, had been whitened with