Tide Marks by H.M. Tomlinson — Read

From his high window he could see where the Thames, once upon a time, was crossed by Charing Cross Bridge. But not on that winter afternoon. The bridge was a shadow in a murk. It did not cross the Thames. There was no Thames. It was suspended in a void which it did not span; there was no reason to cross, because the other side had gone. The bridge ended midway in space. It was but a spectral relic, the ghost of something already half forgotten above a dim gulf into which London was dissolving in the twilight and silence at the end of an epoch. For the twilight did not seem merely of a day at the end of another year, but the useless residue, in which no more could be accomplished, of a period of human history, long and remarkable, that had all but closed.

He wondered whether he would ever cross that bridge again, outward bound. What, a broken bridge? And is there any escape from your own time, even though its end seems so close that you feel you could take one step and be over in the new era? No. There is nothing to do but to put up with the disappearance of the everlasting hills and safe landmarks, and grope about in this fog at the latter end of things, like everybody else. The bridge that day went but halfway across. Once it carried men over to France. It was not wanted for that now. The rocket which he heard burst above it to announce the long-desired arrival of a lovely dove was welcomed four years ago; and the dove either did not stay long or else it had turned into a crow.