in Toronto in 1968, George Bloomfield was preparing to move to New York and make feature films. One night he and Amiel were disturbed by the doorbell. Bloomfield stumbled out of bed. ‘Who is it?’ he asked. ‘Telegram,’ said the voice. Bloomfield opened the door, and was pushed aside by Gary Smith. Finding his way into the bedroom, Smith saw Amiel. He then left. Soon after, Amiel’s mother and stepfather visited the flat for an unemotional but civilised reconciliation. The ghosts of her ‘wild years’ were being interred. To break from her past, she decided to abandon CBC and move with Bloomfield to New York. ‘I’m a camp follower,’ she admitted.24 Soon after their arrival she found a nose surgeon used by Hollywood’s stars. Bloomfield agreed to pay for the second operation. This time she declared the result ‘great’.
Life in New York suited Amiel. Bloomfield was fun, and paid for all her needs. ‘Ten seconds after waking up,’ he recalled, ‘we’d both be laughing.’ She began to read voraciously, stretching her intellect. Unlike in Toronto, she was surrounded by the ‘chic world’ of film celebrities, and came eagerly close to anti-Vietnam war and pro-feminist agitators, notably Jane Fonda and Alan Alda, who were working with Bloomfield. Hovering around Fifth Avenue, she watched the rich buy furs and jewellery, envious of how they recognised each other and could ‘trade fashion names and tips’.25 At length, she justified to Bloomfield her considerable expenditure of his money on exclusive brands: ‘You’ve got to have the right belt, purse, shoes and scarf. The dress doesn’t matter.’ Her easy-going manner, friendliness towards everyone, and willingness to engage in any fantasy Bloomfield suggested in their bedroom, suggested a happy woman. Unseen by others, however, there was another side.
The prescription of the antidepressant Elavil, described by Amiel as ‘my undoing’, had neutralised her sense of responsibility. ‘Nothing was my fault,’ she recalled, because ‘everything is socially or chemically determined’.26 Drugs, Bloomfield complained, had become a routine part of his girlfriend’s life. Screaming in her face, he discovered, grabbed her attention. ‘When you take drugs you look just like your mother,’ he shouted at her. Amiel stood silently, pushing both wrists upwards. Like make-up, the image of the independent and tough woman evaporated, replaced by a vulnerable individual requiring direction to cope with her confused emotions.
Bloomfield would be editing his latest film with Alan Alda in London, where the producers were providing a luxury flat near Buckingham Palace for three months. Amiel was excited. Since her own career as a freelance writer had ground to a near halt, the change would be stimulating. Her relationship with Bloomfield was friendly but no longer passionate. She could use the trip to develop her skills as a hostess. In anticipation of dinner parties, she invested heavily in weighing scales, cooking dishes, recipe books and measuring spoons. To the surprise of Lazlo Kovacs, a guest at one of her London dinner parties, she wore a stopwatch around her neck. Anxiously she watched the seconds tick away. ‘Quick, finish your plate,’ she urged, ‘the next course is coming.’ Everyone, including Bloomfield, would recall the fuss rather than the meal.
Life in London offered a good chance for Amiel to renew her relations with the Buckmans, especially Irene, her father’s older sister, and Peter, her cousin. ‘Do you think it’s too scandalous?’ she asked, modelling a revealing bikini in front of Peter Buckman. Did her choice, she was anxious to know, defy the propriety expected of a Jewish princess? Buckman assured her that she looked beautiful. Meeting the Buckmans was fun, especially Uncle Bernard, the businessman and property developer. ‘You’re very proud of him, aren’t you?’ said Bloomfield. Amiel nodded. Her uncle’s large house in Hampstead, the country home he had bought his son, his own houses on the Côte d’Azur and in St Moritz, his big car and a suspected Swiss bank account excited a woman who wanted wealth but also remained committed to some socialist ideals. In one respect, Bernard Buckman was a mini-idol for both George and Barbara. During his many business trips to China he had met Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai, the Communist leaders, whom they both venerated. Plaintively, Amiel urged Bernard Buckman to negotiate Mao’s approval of a film which would feature Edgar Snow, the author of Red Star Over China, a eulogy of Mao’s revolutionary war. Bloomfield would be the producer. Buckman agreed, but Snow’s death terminated the plan. Amiel’s disappointment revealed no suggestion of disapproval of her uncle’s profitable combination of business and politics.
Amiel’s return to Toronto in 1972 was auspicious. She started writing for local magazines, a divorce was arranged with Gary Smith, who cited her adultery with Bloomfield, and she began searching for a new life after what Bloomfield would later call ‘five aimless years’. By then her sexual relations with Bloomfield were rare. He was focused on his work, and was unconcerned whether she was sleeping with other men. He had steadfastly ignored her desire for children. In need of a man, Amiel approached George Jonas to resume their relationship. Her politics were shifting sharply to the right, she needed intellectual stimulation and a totally different life. By living with Jonas, she could concentrate far more on her own work.
George Jonas had been living for several years with Beverley Slopen, a literary agent. Amiel’s appearance in their apartment did not immediately alarm Slopen. She knew Amiel as ‘a hypochondriac who George might take for a weekend to the Bahamas but could not afford to take shopping’. She did not anticipate that Amiel would provoke a very public split between her and Jonas, after which Amiel returned to her apartment in Chestnut Park Road. ‘I’ve decided to leave,’ she told Bloomfield calmly. Bloomfield was not surprised. ‘Found someone else?’ he asked. ‘I’m going back to George,’ said Amiel. That news did shock Bloomfield. How, he wondered, after five years living with supporters of the feminist and anti-war movements, could she live with such a right-wing man? He never received an answer. Soon after, Bloomfield was called by Jonas and invited to meet at the Coffee Mill, his favourite Hungarian restaurant. According to Bloomfield, while they spoke Jonas took out a gun and showed it under the table. ‘I can’t live without her,’ said Jonas. ‘Don’t try to take her away.’ Jonas describes Bloomfield’s scenario as ‘ludicrous, the invention of a film producer’. Whatever the truth of the matter, the emotions of twenty-five years previously are evidently undiminished.
In her new life Amiel worked frantically, laboriously writing acclaimed magazine articles on various social issues throughout the night, carefully choosing each word in her efforts to express original opinions in a cautious climate. Simultaneously, she reemerged as a popular television pundit to disparage Marxism, feminism and Canada’s dependency culture. Trading on the image of a sexy intellectual, she showed off bruises at a dinner party and declaimed, ‘Sex is no good without pain.’ Together with Jonas she posed as a star with brains and beauty, charm and attitude. Those unconvinced by her self-education during her years with Bloomfield credited Jonas as her Svengali, dubbing her ‘the finest second-hand mind in Canada’. This further eroded her self-confidence, already undermined by the painful withdrawal symptoms after she had given up Elavil. She became fearful of cancer and other illnesses. Her critics spoke of borderline narcissism – which she interpreted as evidence of her growing importance.
Living with Jonas, a poet, journalist and political philosopher, was ideal for an aspiring writer. In October 1974, having discovered that Jonas was also Jewish, she announced, ‘I’ve made an appointment with the local rabbi.’ They were to marry later that month, in a synagogue, with only six guests. Over the following months Amiel’s self-confidence soared. Although she voiced a fear of being disliked, and hesitantly dismissed her urge for children as premature, she asserted absolute certainty about her political convictions. Having shed her last vestige of sympathy for compassionate government, she placed herself in the vanguard of the cause of restoring red-blooded capitalism to socialistic Canada.
Peter Newman, the mercurial editor of Maclean’s, Canada’s only popular political magazine, was impressed by Amiel’s right-wing, anti-authoritarian, iconoclastic criticism of modern fads. In 1966 she had written an astutely argued article, ‘Let’s Reinstate Debtors’ Prisons’,
