First published King’s College Review, 1947
Collected in Reach for Tomorrow as ‘The Curse’
‘Nightfall’, also known as ‘The Curse’, was inspired by a visit to Shakespeare’s grave at a time when I was stationed near Stratford-upon-Avon, training RAF radar mechanics, living what would have been sf only a decade earlier, a juxtaposition which makes this story all the more poignant.
three hundred years, while its fame spread across the world, the little had stood here at the river’s bend. Time and change had touched it
tly; it had heard from afar both the coming of the Armada and the fall
e Third Reich, and all Man’s wars had passed it by.
ow it was gone, as though it had never been. In a moment of time the
and treasure of centuries had been swept away. The vanished streets
d still be traced as faint marks in the vitrified ground, but of the s, nothing remained. Steel and concrete, plaster and ancient oak — it mattered little at the end. In the moment of death they had stood er, transfixed by the glare of the detonating bomb. Then, even before could flash into fire, the blast waves had reached them and they had d to be. Mile upon mile the ravening hemisphere of flame had ded over the level farmlands, and from its heart had risen the twist-totem-pole that had haunted the minds of men for so long, and to
little purpose.
c rocket had been a stray, one of the last ever to be fired. It was hard
y for what target it had been intended. Certainly not London, for n was no longer a military objective. London, indeed, was no longer g at all. Long ago the men whose duty it was had calculated that of the hydrogen bombs would be sufficient for that rather small target.
tending twenty, they had been perhaps a little overzealous.
S was not one of the twenty that had done their work so well. Both 4estination and its origin were unknown: whether it had come across lonely Arctic wastes or far above the waters of the Atlantic, no one
tell and there were few now who cared. Once there had been men
had known such things, who his watched from afar the flight of
the great projectiles and had sent their own missiles to meet them. Often that appointment had been kept, high above the Earth where the sky was black and sun and stars shared the heavens together. Then there had bloomed for a moment that indescribable flame, sending out into space a message that in centuries to come other eyes than Man’s would see and understand.
But that had been days ago, at the beginning of the War. The defenders had long since been brushed aside, as they had known they must be. They had held on to life long enough to discharge their duty; too late, the enemy his learned his mistake. He would launch no further rockets; those still falling he had dispatched hours ago on secret trajectories that had taken them far out into space. They were returning now unguided and inert, waiting in vain for the signals that should lead them to their destinies. One by one they were falling at random upon a world which they could harm no more.
The river had already overflowed its banks; somewhere down its course the land had twisted beneath that colossal hammer-blow and the way to the sea was no longer open. Dust was still falling in a fine rain, as it would do for days as Man’s cities and treasures returned to the world that had given them birth. But the sky was no longer wholly darkened, and in the west the sun was settling through banks of angry cloud.
A church had stood here by the river’s edge, and though no trace of the building remained, the gravestones that the years had gathered round it still marked its place. Now the stone slabs lay in parallel rows, snapped off at their bases and pointing mutely along the line of the blast. Some were half flattened into the ground, others had been cracked and blistered by terrific heat, but many still bore the messages they had carried down the centuries in vain.
The light died in the west and the unnatural crimson faded from the sky. Yet still the graven words could be clearly read, lit by a steady, unwavering radiance, too faint to be seen by day but strong enough to banish night. The land was burning: for miles the glow of its radioactivity was reflected from the clouds. Through the glimmering landscape wound the dark ribbon of the steadily widening river, and as the waters submerged the land that deadly glow continued unchanging in the depths. In a generation, perhaps, it would have faded from sight, but a hundred years might pass before life could safely come this way again.
Timidly the waters touched the worn gravestone that for more than three hundred years had lain before the vanished altar. The church that had sheltered it so long had given it some protection at the last, and only a slight discoloration of the rock told of the fires that had passed this way. In the corpse-light of the dying land, the archaic words could still be traced as the water rose around them, breaking at last in tiny ripples across the stone. Line by line the epitaph upon which so many millions had gazed slipped beneath the conquering waters. For a little while the letters could still be faintly seen; then they were gone forever.
Good freed for Iesvs sake forbeare, To digg the dvst encloased heare
Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones,
And cvrst be he yt moves my bones.
Undisturbed through all eternity the poet could sleep in safety now: in the silence and darkness above his head, the Avon was seeking its new outlet to the sea.