Unsettled sweetness clouds her too-blue eyes,

tongues whisper secrets half aloud.

Her clothes are a joke, stolen from Fairyland,

her hair’s raked out like straw; an angle thatch.

 

She darts about, disturbing sleeping Jane.

What will she do next? They’re after her.

‘Come back to bed now, Bertha.

Put the candle out. You shouldn’t be here in the Master’s room.’

 

Grace Poole is in her cups. The mad one and the drunken one,

sly devils, work to undermine the man.

The flame seethes under the curtains in the bed chamber,

there’s trouble brewing, something’s caught alight.

 

Expect nothing, Miss Havisham waits in the corner,

by the cobbwebbed chandelier, plotting, and musty with longing,

though Estella’s long gone, her lover fled away,

and Pip has never cared about her, not really.

 

There in the children’s quarters, Violet Elizabeth Bott

is screaming the place down and no one will shut her up.

She’s sick all right. Put your hand to your ear.

Can you hear her? Can you hear her?

 

And the French Lieutenant’s woman on the Cobb,

thinks she has waited long enough.

Her eyes are watering, but not with tears.

Her cloak is spattered with the sea salt wind.

 

And where the Fens dissolve and meet the sea

that unpleasant old woman, Mrs Ravoon,

squats in the moat and mumbles someone’s name.

Mother, what do you want, sitting there all alone?

 

They are waking up after a long sleep.

They are all waking up after a long sleep,

 

and they are mad as hell.