My Real Children by Jo Walton

swept up wildly at the base of the cliffs, and she liked it when the sea was calm and she could go down on the sand. She kept a wary eye on the tide, which she knew could easily cut her off, and made sure one of the other mistresses knew where she had gone and when she should be back. When it grew too cold to swim she continued to walk on the cliff tops, and even to go down to the edge of the sea and watch the waves. By the sea she always felt that God loved her and cared about her. She returned refreshed and ready to see the best in everyone.
    She began to develop a brisk classroom manner to which the girls responded. She reminded herself that there was something interesting about everyone and began to find it in her pupils. A company of actors came to the school and put on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which was that year’s set play for GCE. They were good, and she managed to use the visit to find some real enthusiasm in the girls, especially the girls in the lower forms who hadn’t read the play beforehand. She petitioned for some gramophone records of Shakespeare, and the head of department agreed to consider it for the future.
    All that year the highlight remained her weekly letters from Mark, the letters in which he felt so close. He was funny, passionate, fascinating—he told her everything and had suggestions about everything. When she told him, awkwardly, about feeling close to God by the sea, he expanded on the Romantic view of nature and then extended that to the created world. In person, when they managed to meet, at Christmas and Easter, he was awkward and seemed a little shy of her, but she told herself that when they were married it would be like the letters all the time. He addressed her as his “second self” and said that she would redeem him. She read them over and over until she knew them almost by heart.
    At the end of the year on a day when she had been invigilating examinations all day and had forty-five papers to mark before the next morning, she was unexpectedly called to the telephone.
    The telephone at The Pines had been installed in the Thirties, and stood in a corridor in a pine cabinet shaped much like a red post office telephone box. There was a modicum of privacy, but not much more—anyone walking down the corridor could hear you. It was not much used except in cases of emergency, and it had been installed largely for the benefit of anxious parents. Patty had called Mark once to tell him she couldn’t meet him in Bristol because the school was under quarantine for mumps. They had not used it for communication. They had their letters. As she hurried along she knew what it must be—his results were due, his long-awaited First, and he must want to tell her in person.
    She hardly recognized his voice at first, it sounded so harsh through the long distance line. “I have a Third,” he said, in tones of tragedy.
    She was astonished. “How could that happen?”
    “I’ve not been working at English, I’ve been concentrating on philosophy instead. I assumed I’d just walk through. I always have before. My real work was with Wittgenstein, but that wasn’t how they saw it.”
    “Of course it wasn’t.”
    “What? What did you say?”
    “I’m sorry. Can you—can Wittgenstein do anything?”
    “Nobody can do anything for me now. My life is ruined.”
    “It’s not as bad as that,” Patty said.
    “I won’t get a fellowship. I’ll have to become a schoolmaster. I’m calling to say I want to release you from our engagement now that I have no prospects.” Hysteria rose in his tones.
    “But that’s ridiculous. I’ll stand by you, you know I will. I’ll wait as long as you like.”
    “I won’t let you down, I promised to marry you, but you’ll have to marry me now or never!” Mark said.
    Patty felt faint, and the smell of chalk and cabbage and girls’ sweat rose up around her. She did not want to be a burden to Mark, to marry him when he could not afford to start a family. As