by Jim Hutton
We knew that if Goliath wasn’t waiting with the other cats when Freddie got home, he’d go completely berserk. We kept searching and searching, but by the time Freddie arrived home, shortly before midnight, Goliath still hadn’t returned.
We owned up right away. ‘We don’t know where Goliath is. We can’t find him anywhere,’ Joe told Freddie.
From Freddie’s look we knew that his day at the studio hadn’t gone well. This was all he needed. Worried by what might have happened to the kitten, he was close to tears. He ran around the house and garden calling for Goliath. He asked where we’d searched and suggested other places. We were sure we’d looked everywhere.
Freddie became frantic, and in deep despair he hurled a beautiful Japanese hibachi through the window of the guest bedroom. It was the hibachi we had spent all our time in Japan searching for so diligently.
When Freddie calmed down we talked about what else to do. Joe suggested putting-up ‘lost’ posters in the neighbourhood, and Freddie said he would offer a £1000 reward.
I went out into the garden one last time calling for Goliath. Then I heard a car pull up in Logan Mews. I heard a front door open and close, then the tiniest of squeaks. I flew out of the house in the direction of the sound. Goliath was crouched under a car, shaking.
I picked him up and went into the house. Freddie was over the moon. For five minutes or more he poured his attention on the kitten, cuddling and stroking him. Then, like a mother, Freddie scolded the cat, shouting and screaming at tiny Goliath for leaving Garden Lodge. The dark ball of fur just sat there, listening calmly to Freddie’s outburst and purring loudly.
Whenever I was beavering away in the garden, Goliath would jump up and sit on my shoulder, purring in my left ear while watching me work.
Delilah was another story; she became the little princess of the house. Of all the cats at Garden Lodge, Delilah was Freddie’s favourite and the one he’d pick up and stroke the most often. When Freddie went to bed, it was Delilah he brought in with us. She’d sleep at the foot of the bed, before slipping out for a night-time prowl around Garden Lodge.
Delilah was a spoilt cat and depended on Freddie for everything, even protection from the other cats. They would gang up on her and she would run into our bedroom – it was a cat sanctuary. In many ways the cats were Freddie’s children and we all thought of them that way. The slightest feline sneeze or twitch and he’d send them off to the vet for a check-up. And we were old-fashioned when it came to having to have sex in total privacy. Whenever Freddie and I jumped on each other in the bedroom to make love, he would always ensure that none of the cats were watching.
That year we had Christmas lunch with Joe and Phoebe at Mary’s flat. Mary prepared a lovely meal with all the trimmings, and after lunch we flaked out watching television, then exchanged a few small presents brought over from Garden Lodge; the main presents wouldn’t be opened until we returned to the house.
As he did to everyone, Freddie gave me a cheque along with my present. He had pinned it to a card which he signed with love, thanking me for looking after him throughout the year. I gave him a salt and pepper set in Waterford crystal. New Year’s Eve was a quieter affair than usual, with only a handful of friends invited to Garden Lodge. Freddie was noticeably slowing up as his illness took its inevitable toll. But we went about our everyday lives, pretending for Freddie’s sake that everything was normal.
On 2 January I received a letter telling me the date of my dreaded driving test later that month. On the morning of the test I sat with Freddie and Mary. ‘Well,’ Freddie said, ‘I was going to get you a leather jacket for your birthday, but if you pass your test I’ll help you buy a car.’
I said: ‘Don’t be ridiculous! I hadn’t even thought of getting a little banger.’
I took the test and, to my amazement, passed. I couldn’t wait to get back home and tell Garden Lodge my news. An hour later I arrived home. Freddie was sitting in the lounge, anxious to hear the news.
‘Well?’ Freddie asked.
‘I’ve passed,’ I said. I was still in a state of utter disbelief.
‘Well done!’ he cried and jumped up to give me a cuddle.
That night Freddie laid on an impromptu party and told the guests why we were celebrating. Silly little presents turned up all night, including the kind of joke sun-visor which usually identified ‘Kevin and Sharon’ types as driver and passenger, except mine read ‘Melina and Jim’. The names were the wrong way around, making Freddie the driver. There was little chance of that ever happening, though he did tell me he’d once had a driving lesson – just one. It lasted no more than ten minutes. He met the instructor, got into the car, stalled the engine, got out and declared: ‘I can’t be bothered with this.’
A couple of days after I passed my test, Freddie, Joe and the others were sitting around in the kitchen. Terry came in through the garden with a twinkle in his eye. Freddie had secretly asked him to scout around and find me a car. Freddie called me into the kitchen. On the table were some glossy brochures for a Volvo 740 GLE estate. ‘Here, pick a colour,’ said Freddie. He was serious.
Mary objected to Freddie buying me this particular car. She felt it wasn’t wise for my first one to be brand-new. I thought she was talking a lot of sense. But Freddie would have none of it.
‘For God’s sake,’ he said to her. ‘It’s his birthday present. He gets a new car.’
The next day Freddie gave me a cheque for the deposit on the Volvo and Terry ran me to the garage. I was so excited; who wouldn’t be? We went through all the colours and the various options, and I settled on a metallic charcoal-grey colour with a sunroof and black leather upholstery.
Later in January Freddie reunited with Brian, Roger and John at Town House Studios to work on a new album, The Miracle. Freddie was pleased to get back to recording with the others again. He had several ideas buzzing around in his mind that he wanted to work on.
Freddie and Mike Moran were also working with Elaine Paige’s boyfriend, lyricist Tim Rice, on the song ‘The Golden Boy’ for the Barcelona album. Elaine said she wanted to record an album of Queen songs and Freddie said he liked the idea a great deal. He made a point of taking a close interest in how she interpreted the songs.
Freddie and I met up with Elaine and Tim a number of times. One night Tim took us to Wodka, a Polish restaurant in Kensington which stocked some of the finest vodkas in the world, and Freddie was in his element. He tried several different sorts and by the time we left we were almost on our knees. We got back to Garden Lodge completely plastered.
Roger and Dominique Taylor’s wedding was held at Kensington and Chelsea register office on 25 January. Freddie and Mary went along as witnesses while, back at Garden Lodge, Phoebe and I gave Joe a hand preparing a small reception for after the ceremony. It was a happy occasion, and while the guests were leaving Freddie gave me a hug and a kiss.
‘Do you love me?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I love you,’ I said. I held him tight and we kissed.
He constantly needed the reassurance that I loved him, and until the end would now and then ask whether I did. He knew I loved him, but he needed to hear me say it. Even though thousands of fans around the world loved him without ever having met him, the only person he seemed to want to know really did love him was me. His fondness for me made me feel very special. I’d never known anyone want my affection so much, and I was deeply flattered. And I loved him dearly in return.
The night before Valentine’s Day in 1988 Freddie and I had an enormous row. I’m not sure how it started, but it finished with the two of us going to bed and barely speaking to each other.
Next morning I got up especially early and left Freddie to sleep on. I drove to New Covent Garden, in south London, and bought sixty Blue Moon roses. They were pale blue, larger than the average rose, with a magnificent scent. They were perfect and Freddie was especially fond of them.
I got home and arranged them in a wicker basket. Then I took them up to Fredd
ie in bed, along with tea.
‘Happy Valentine’s Day,’ I said.
Freddie was still in a bad mood with me and grunted. He seemed to have woken up in the same rotten mood he’d fallen asleep in. I left him to it and went down to start work in the garden.
When Freddie got up in the middle of the morning he moved the Blue Moon arrangement into the hall. Later in the day friends came to visit and they commented on the spectacular basket of roses.
‘Yes,’ said Freddie, ‘my husband did them for me.’
They had pleased him, after all. And that night in bed he told me so. We kissed and made up and he gave me a Valentine card.
The next time I met Monserrat Caballé we were going to Pontevecchio’s for supper, with about fifteen of us stretched out over the entire end wall of the restaurant. When the Italian waiters saw who our guest of honour was, they couldn’t believe their eyes. As a special treat, after supper Freddie and Montsy broke into ‘Exercises in Free Love’ and several other numbers.
After working in the koi pool one morning I went into the kitchen where Freddie was having a cup of coffee.
‘What’s happened to your ring?’ he asked.
I looked at my hand and saw that the Cartier ring he had given me was badly dented and scratched. I had damaged it while shifting rocks in the pool.
‘That’s why I don’t like wearing rings,’ I told him. Working out in the garden it could only be a danger. I got the ring repaired, and after that I only wore it on special occasions. I’d keep forgetting to put it on after I finished in the garden.
In April Freddie appeared for the first and last time in a West End musical. He took part in a special charity performance of Dave Clark’s Time at the Dominion Theatre. All proceeds were going to the Terrence Higgins Trust to help pay for research into Aids.
Freddie’s own condition was something that he was still reluctant to talk about with me. I knew he went for regular check-ups to his own GP, Dr Gordon Atkinson, and that he had met a number of Aids specialists. I knew, too, that none of them could bring good news. Freddie’s death was inevitable. It was simply a matter of how long he could cling to life.
7
DUCKINGHAM PALACE
In the early summer of 1988 Freddie and I flew off to Ibiza for a very quiet ten-day holiday. Phoebe came too, as did Peter Straker and Graham Hamilton, a stand-in driver since Terry was on leave. Before we left the country Freddie was raising merry hell over the time Volvo were taking to deliver my birthday present. He demanded that the car be there by the time we returned.
Unlike our previous two visits to Ibiza, this trip was blissfully quiet and for the first time we didn’t stay at Pike’s. Freddie was considerably weaker and wanted to avoid any serious socialising; also, he felt the hotel lacked the privacy he needed now more than ever. To avoid the press, we borrowed Roger Taylor’s villa and spent most days flaked out around the pool sunbathing, hidden from prying eyes.
Some days we ventured out. We did some shopping in Ibiza, for clothes and pottery and ceramics for The Mews. And we ate in good restaurants every night. The only thing missing was the comfort the cats brought to him. The first thing Freddie did when we got home to Garden Lodge was to herd up the cats who were waiting for us in the hallway.
Also waiting was the news that my Volvo was ready for collection. Terry went with me to collect it from the garage. Freddie had given him specific instructions to take me right away to drive on a motorway for the first time. By the time I got home I was a nervous wreck.
The first journey Freddie made in the Volvo was when I went to collect him from the studio one night. He was a nervous passenger, constantly upset by my terrible habit of creeping up on the car in front, then stopping very close behind. When I did that, Freddie’s knee-jerk reaction was to throw his arm out and grip the dashboard. He was in no danger, but I made sure he always wore his seat-belt all the same. And I insisted that there should never be any physical contact between us when I was driving in case he interrupted my concentration.
On that cautious first journey home with Freddie I crept back to Garden Lodge no faster than 25mph all the way – and the ‘Melina and Jim’ sun-visor sprang to mind. But I took a different route home from the one Terry usually used and, thanks mostly to empty roads, it appeared to be faster.
‘Why doesn’t Terry take me down this route?’ Freddie asked. ‘It’s much quicker.’
‘Because Terry is used to his route and I’m used to mine,’ I said. And the sun-visor sprang to mind a second time.
That year I tried my hand again at breeding some koi spawn. The previous year the fry had all died, but this year about twenty tiny fish survived. Freddie took a great interest in how they were faring and took to one in particular, which looked rather sorry for itself as it had a badly deformed mouth. Freddie watched the koi in the pool for hours. He enjoyed feeding them himself, and most adored those which would take food straight from his hand.
One of the spare rooms upstairs at Garden Lodge was used by Joe as a study and was piled high with his books. Freddie said to me one morning: ‘I want you to do me a big favour, which might be a little difficult.’
‘Fire away,’ I replied.
‘You know the little room Joe uses as an office?’ he asked. ‘Well, could you build shelves for it?’
‘I’ll have to think about it,’ I said. ‘Where exactly do you want them?’
‘All around the walls,’ Freddie told me. ‘From floor to ceiling.’
I measured up the room, then headed for the timber merchant’s to order the wood. I got the wood home and spread it out in the garden. I designed shelves which would slot together. There were four units in all, to fill two sides of Joe’s room.
In the afternoon Freddie asked: ‘What are you doing now?’
‘I’m making your shelving units,’ I replied.
‘I didn’t mean for you to make them so soon,’ he said.
‘Well, I might as well,’ I answered, shrugging my shoulders. And that kept me busy for the next three weeks. Every so often he’d pop in to see how they were coming along and I’d chase him away.
Terry gave me a hand to install them. Still Freddie kept asking: ‘Are you sure they’re going to fit?’
They did fit, perfectly. It was the first piece of carpentry I ever did for Freddie. But it was not to be the last.
A week later Freddie searched me out in the garden.
‘I’ve got another little favour to ask you,’ he started.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘I’ve had paint made up to the same colour as the wallpaper in Joe’s office. Could you paint the units the same colour?’
Of course I did, and when the shelving was completely finished he came to see them and was over the moon. But, as always, Freddie was only over the moon for a day. Soon he was working out what else was needed in the house.
Shortly after I made the shelves, I damaged my back badly in the pond. I wasn’t happy with the positioning of a stone bowl, which was fed by water from a large bamboo shoot resting on rocks.
I waded into the pond in my waders, then tried to reposition the bowl. I moved it, but in doing so pulled my back, displacing a disc and cracking a vertebra in the small of the spine.
I refused to go on painkillers in case I started lifting things which were too heavy. For the next few weeks I had to go to a physiotherapist. After several visits I was given exercises to do. I was practising in the Japanese Room one day, lying flat on my back, when Freddie walked in grinning like a Cheshire cat. He lay next to me on the floor and asked how I was and what I was doing, so I explained.
As I turned over for the next exercise he was facing me. He smiled and said: ‘I’ve got a little present for you.’
I slowly opened the little Cartier box. Freddie had given me a pair of cufflinks.
‘What’s this for?’ I asked.
‘Oh, I just wanted to buy you something,’ he replied.
‘You shouldn’t be wasting your
money on these,’ I said. I didn’t wish to sound ungrateful, but that was often what I felt about his never-ending generosity.
He’d buy things on the spur of the moment, perhaps going through a jeweller’s catalogue until his eyes fell on something he liked. This time Joe had been instructed by Freddie to go to Cartier’s to buy cufflinks for his husband.
Another time I was getting a lot of trouble with insects eating the plants in the conservatory. Whenever Freddie was with me I would plough through gardening manuals trying to work out which creatures were killing the plants. In the end I found the answer: red spider mites, too small for the human eye to see. I bought a magnifying glass to be able to see them. The plants were infested with them.
When I got into bed two days later, Freddie gave me a box. I opened it and there was a beautiful silver magnifying glass and a silver letter opener.
‘Well, I want you to be able to see the bugs,’ he said.
It was in the autumn of that year, on a particularly dank day, that I met for the first time Freddie’s parents, Bomi and Jer Bulsara. They came to Garden Lodge to have dinner with their son. There was a strong physical resemblance to his mother, a little lady with dark, greying hair and a lovely smile.
At the time The Mews and the garden were still a mass of foundation trenches and mounds of earth. I was in the garden and Freddie brought his mum and dad out with him when he brought me a cup of coffee. He had not told them about our affair.
‘If they ask you where you sleep, tell them in the Pink Room!’ he said.
