Writing this is proving to be much harder than I thought - and much more painful. I thought that as the weeks passed, my feelings would become more blunted but yet still, as I pen these words, I feel a sharp pain. My friend Harvey is dead and it still feels so far from reality.
I met Harvey (or ‘Harv’ as a lot of his friends called him) at a literary event at the synagogue in London to which we both belonged. I still remember the evening well - it was entitled ‘What makes a book Jewish?” and someone remarked ‘It’s the book that won’t stop talking.” I asked someone on the panel a question and, afterwards, Harvey approached me and remarked how pertinent my remark had been.
We started talking - and we never stopped.
Soon after, we were meeting for coffee, attending lectures, going to evening concerts at the Wigmore Hall (we were both passionate about Bach) and spending hours deep in discussion. At that time, I was living half in Israel and half in England and was looking for a place to spend a few weeks in London. He invited me to stay with him in his enormous house - and without thinking twice, I accepted. And from the moment I stepped through the door, he made me feel it was my home too.
We had a rapport that people remarked upon. We could talk to each other about so many things and the fact that he was 30 years older than me was irrelevant. Harvey was erudite - he’d written a PhD in 13th century English trust law which his advisor had said was ‘the dissertation of the decade’ and yet he was modest about it. He was a prolific reader (making me look like a dilettante), and was well-informed about art, music, history, philosophy and science. But he was also emotionally aware, a man who took women very seriously, actually a man who secretly believed women were superior to men…
In the years I knew him we would spend hours at the Tate Britain, the Royal Academy, the British Museum and National Trust houses. We explored Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum, wandered every floor of the Tate Modern and went to all kinds of ‘Open House’ events in London, including Samuel Johnson’s house, where he persuaded me to dress up in an olde English gown! After every exhibition or outing, we’d grab coffee and cake and ‘debrief’ before returning home to ruminate on the day's events.
In the kitchen, Harvey was one of the greatest cooks I’ve ever met and took it upon himself to prepare wonderful dishes for both of us. Hearty soups, Asian stir fries, ravioli with homemade pesto, fish pie, mediterranean salads and his speciality - melanzane alla parmigiana. The last was a dish that, as he himself put it, “required a lot of processes” but he cooked it for me endlessly, simply because he knew I loved it so. I still remember him carefully grilling eggplants, painstakingly stirring tomato sauce and crumbling in creamy mozzarella to the mixture before, 45 minutes later, removing it from the oven, bubbling hot and placing it in front of me. The smell, the look, the taste...it’s so vivid in my mind, even now.
Our Friday nights became sacred - Harvey’s kids were grown up and so we started spending them together - the familiar ritual of him picking up challah in the morning (and arriving back in the afternoon, telling me “Sarah - you’ll never guess who I ran into at Daniel’s bakery…” ). As night fell, I would set the table, put out the kiddush wine cup and Hebrew prayer book and Harv would open a bottle of wine (oh how he loved a good French wine). Together we made the blessings before sitting down to appreciate a long, lazy dinner, where we argued politics and laughed endlessly.
As time passed, I moved my life more to Israel but I returned to England often and it was to Harvey’s place that I always decamped. I felt comfortable there, “at home” and loved. Arriving at his place after my flight, I’d hug him tight and we’d talk for hours, before I retired to bed, leaving him reading into the wee hours. Awaking in the morning, I’d come down to his light, airy kitchen, where he’d already laid out my breakfast.
The care and consideration Harvey showed towards me is hard to describe. He wasn’t just my great friend, he was my surrogate father. He listened, always patient, supported, suggested, advised (only when asked) and comforted. He praised me (without gushing), defended me (when he felt I had been wronged) and regularly reminded me of many of my achievements, when I was down in the dumps.
Perhaps his greatest achievement was teaching me to cook (something no-one else had succeeded in doing) and never once scolded me for my endless mistakes. My endearing memories of him are bound up in the kitchen and I can still hear him warning me, “Never cook on a high heat, you’ll burn the food”, “Cut the vegetables diagonally so you can pick them up with your chopsticks” and (my personal favourite), Harvey standing at the stove, in his Michelangelo print apron, patiently deep-frying tofu as I asked him how he got them to be so crisp.
“The trick is, Sarah” he remarked, only half-seriously, “is to have the courage not to turn them.” Even now, I can’t fry tofu without that remark ringing in my head.
How glad I am to have met him. What an influence he had on me. And what a hole he has left in my life. I keep waiting for the pain to pass but...but it just won’t. No doubt this is the price you pay for attachment but I never knew it would be this hard.
There are so many memories that I have of Harvey, I could spend hours recounting them. Watching Masterchef together (with Harvey looking on, appreciatively, at top-quality dishes) telling me: “I’d eat that, Sarah!” Harvey calling upstairs to me at 11am on the dot, to let me know our morning coffee was ready. The two of us walking on Hampstead Heath, or in the grounds of London’s Kenwood, watching autumn leaves fall or spring flowers blossom. Me watching Harvey playing with his two grandsons in the garden, or Facetiming his daughter and her kids abroad.
But most of all I’ll miss Harvey’s laugh, his extraordinary sense of humour, his fast wit and his sharp eye. He was, simply put, one of the cleverest people I’ve ever known, a true Renaissance man, who excelled at whatever he put his hand to. And yet he wasn’t arrogant - he was modest, kind, thoughtful and patient to a fault. I remember telling him once that he had to live forever and him laughing and responding: “Don’t be ridiculous Sarah” before pouring us tea and buttering us scones.
I’ll miss you more than you could ever imagine, Harv. Thanks for everything and, wherever your spirit is, know I love you and will never forget you.