Beautiful World, Where Are You

At 6:45am, Felix turns off his work alarm. He and Eileen chat in the kitchen, and he accidentally insults her by asking her why she works for such a low salary and why, if she’s such great friends with Alice, she didn’t visit the rectory earlier. Upset, Eileen asks why Alice didn’t travel to see her. That evening, the four go to Felix’s ex-girlfriend’s place for a birthday party, and Felix jokingly warns them not to be overly intellectual while there. Out for a smoke, Felix asks Simon about Eileen’s bad mood, but Simon is tight-lipped and gives a resigned smile. Confused by his demeanor, Felix accuses him of trying too hard to be like Jesus in his romantic life.

Damian arrives and confronts Felix, speaking pejoratively to Alice, who snaps back. Felix asks Alice why she intimidates people, and she takes the question personally, feeling offended. In return, he complains that he treats her normally and that she apparently needs someone who just “appreciates her better” (301). The two question the nature of their romantic relationship then, until Felix sings a traditional song for guests in the living room. “He was standing against the counter, under the ceiling lamp, so that his hair and face and the slim slanting figure of his body were bathed in light, and his eyes were dark, and his mouth also” (303). As Alice watches him sing, the music makes her tear up with its beauty. The four leave the party in the pitch darkness late at night.

On the car ride home, Felix asks Alice if she’s planning on buying the rectory, and Eileen recoils, upset that Alice would move to the countryside officially. Eileen goes straight to her bedroom, the “window reflecting the faint grey ellipse of her face” as she jerks the curtain closed (307). After a moment, she descends to the kitchen and finds the other three smoking in the kitchen and talking about their respective families. Eileen admits her parents don’t think highly of Alice because they believe she is a bad friend for not keeping Eileen “in the loop” while she was hospitalized. Alice and Eileen argue, and Simon gets caught in the mix, with Alice calling out his martyr complex and self-importance. She also lashes out at Felix before feeling ashamed and apologizing. Felix tells Alice he loves her for the first time, which reassures her.

Upstairs, shaking, Eileen says to Simon, “You don’t love me. She doesn’t love me. I have no one in my life. No one. I can’t believe I have to live like this. I don’t understand” (319). He tries to reassure her that Alice isn’t leaving her forever, but Eileen faces him next, telling him that he never lets her close to him and pushes her away when she tries. He senses now, finally, that Eileen has been all along wanting a bold declaration of love. He tells her he wants to spend his life making her happy, and Eileen embraces him, whispering something unheard. Eileen meets Alice in the middle of the staircase and, the two hug and apologize profusely. Eileen tries to explain her hurt, saying that she misses their youth when they were closer and that she doesn’t want anything to be different. Alice asks whether, since things are different, they could still be friends—and Eileen acquiesces.

Alice’s last letter arrives to Eileen approximately 18 months after the summer visit, and Alice apologizes for losing track of time while working. She updates her friend about her and Felix’s activities during the COVID pandemic lockdown, philosophizing more about celebrity culture. Alice says she still suffers from chronic poor health due to stress, but she nonetheless feels “wonderfully and almost frighteningly lucky” that the four of them are alive (331).

She writes that she has started to believe in God—not as a staunch Catholic, but as a devotee of the abstract concept of goodness and love. This inner peace helps temper some stress from the work of writing a new novel.

In Eileen’s last letter, she breaks the news that she is expecting a baby around the start of July the next year and that Simon is so excited about the baby that she feels foolish for having ever doubted his love. Admittedly, with the pandemic and potentially giving birth while still under lockdown, Eileen says, “Of course everything is terrible” (336), but she feels happier now because the world seems full of possibility. She admits the irrationality of having a baby during a pandemic when she never seriously considered this life for herself, but she concludes that throughout history, civilizations kept giving birth and keeping on so why shouldn’t she: “I know in a thin rationalist way that what I’m saying doesn’t make any sense,” she writes, “[b]ut I feel it, I feel it, and I know it to be true” (334). Finally Eileen feels grateful for her one life and to be expecting a baby alongside the boy with whom she grew up.