Beau Gabriel “Salt Marsh Hay” at C.G.Williams, London

A Tragedy in Five Acts and a Prologue

It is summer on the coast of Maine. Promise and Deceit set out to pick blueberries. As they traipse up a hill, Promise begins to tell her friend a story.

“There once were two sisters named Gwendolyn and Phoebe. They lived together in an old farmhouse overlooking the sea, surrounded by unruly hydrangeas. At the bottom of their garden stood a dock, and at the dock bobbed Gwen’s little dinghy, the Trillium. All of this was told to me by Summer, to whom we now must go, as our story starts with her.”

On the dock Gwen says her goodbyes before setting sail for Isle au Haut, on whose rocky shores the Atlantic pounds without cease. Her sister, who has tread on a splinter, remains ashore.

Phoebe’s dreams are troubled that night. A great storm breaks over Penobscot Bay. Deceit turns on Promise, beating her erstwhile friend about the head with the rose-hip crown of plot. A bolt of lighting strikes the Trillium, and she founders.

Phoebe wakes to a changed world. The clouds of August scud merrily across the sky as a troupe of gardeners comes through the orchard, picking apples and flirting with berry-pickers. But for Phoebe, summer’s charms are gone. She sets out in search of her sister.

On the top of Mount Desert Island she finds the Sibyl perched on a lichen-covered rock. Might she know Gwen’s fate? But the Sibyl shows only this: Color and Form sharing a blueberry cake, as martins pick at the crumbs and then head south. Summer has become autumn.

Phoebe descends into a dense forrest. Two sinister horsemen come through the trees. Phoebe scrambles to hide, but one man’s gaze finds her, and he charges forward.

The next morning she wakes up in his bed. Pleasure and shame smoudler in equal measure, before dawn’s light sweeps both away, leaving only loneliness. Phoebe fears she will never see her sister again.

Gwen’s ghost appears through an October mist. Bits of kelp cling to her matted hair, and wisps of cordgrass encircle her head. A rope binds her wrist, and a tiny sand crab makes his way along her hand. She wraps her tattered robe more tightly around her shoulders, and fades away.

It’s nearing winter, and Phoebe has wandered for a long time.

She comes at last to Isle au Haut, where her journey ends. Above the shale beach, on a crimson headland, she finds two figures. Form, elegant and plain, extends her hand. Tragedy, stripped of pretense, places the rose-hip crown on Phoebe’s head. Together they dance a volta.

at C.G.Williams, London
until April 23, 2025