The Hedonists

At Europe’s fast-beating heart, erstwhile playboy Howard Winston Jocelyn the Third, now enthralled by the charismatic Anika, throws a closing-down Party – spelt with a capital “P”. The Party delivers whole bevies of luscious lovelies into the eager arms of young-diplomat-narrator Randall Pascoe Maitland.
Randall has been spicing his ride on the diplomatic carousel with a series of romantic romps. Miriam, full of youth, beauty and vitality and Carrie, with freckles on her nose, have been keeping his sex life “robust.”
After stringing Howard along, Anika vanishes into Africa, but, when Howard returns to the New York headquarters of his men’s cosmetic company, she doesn’t let him off her hook.
He wangles an assignment to Africa to search for her. There he again meets Randall who has been posted to Benua to serve under Ambassador Richard Makepeace. During his Transit to Africanus, via London, Canberra and Rome, Randall has learned little about Africa but he has rejoiced in love and friendship, especially with Jasmine’s generous and tender loving care in the Eternal City of Rome.
In Benua, Makepeace connives at the “pacification” of the Ndolo; but his lovely girlfriend Angela is appalled at the gruesome massacres entailed in the “pacification” and stirs Randall, heroically, to help her save their Ndolo friends.
Soon, Randall and Howard have to leave for New York. Angela returns to Australia – which she describes as “harmless, phlegmatic, don’t-care-a-bugger-about-anything-much Aussie.”
Lovelorn, Howard moons about Manhattan comforted by hobo-philosopher Old Geezer. No longer heroic, Randall compliantly helps the UN Security Council shunt the Ndolo genocide on to a siding where it will unobtrusively rot.
The laundering of the Ndolo horror accomplished, Randall heads for home where Howard has a new company assignment. Together, they make a “Transit of Venus” via romantic Mexico. High above the Pacific, Howard’s boxcars of obsession with Anika are shuttled erotically aside in the freight yards of sleep.
In Canberra, Randall’s Foreign Ministry offers a bizarre but warm welcome but with Angela, complications intrude. Howard and Randall throw a rollicking party in Canberra’s Mugga Way. At the start, the going isn’t smooth but Howard’s star rises and Randall resumes his romantic romps.
Even more, Randall pleases his Foreign-Ministry masters so much that they ask him to join Ambassador Makepeace in the lushest of diplomatic green pastures. Makepeace is being honoured with one of the higher Orders of Australia for his “statesmanship in resolving” the Ndolo problem.
“So,” Randall reasons, “even I might, in the fullness of the years, rise to the rank of Ambassador myself and be awarded a minor version of the Order of Australia of my own. It is by no means too unrealistic an aspiration for a compliant Randall Pascoe Maitland…”