Mercury and Me

by Jim Hutton

  We said some terrible things to each other in the heat of the moment during arguments like these. We’d both say things we didn’t mean. They could become a battle of who was going to hurt the other most. This time Freddie had the upper hand.

  Then we made up and lay next to each other on the bed. I was crying. For the first time since he had told me of his condition Freddie brought up the subject of his death. He asked me a very odd question, the gist of it being: ‘What are you going to do when I die?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, still crying. ‘I can’t handle it all.’

  ‘Well, how do you think I feel?’ he replied. I looked over and Freddie was crying too.

  He cuddled up to me and we cried quietly together, hugging each other tighter for some kind of reassurance. A few minutes later I got up to go to the bathroom and did a very odd thing: I shaved off my moustache.

  When I returned to bed Freddie looked astonished. He’d never seen me without my moustache. He knew I loved the moustache so much I thought I’d never shave it off. It was a sort of token sacrifice to show him how sorry I was that he was having a bad time.

  We cuddled up in bed and he soon fell asleep. But I didn’t. I lay awake crying most of the night, with the thought of Freddie’s illness and his inevitable death racing through my mind. What was I going to do when he died? I had no idea.

  I often used to cry on my own, thinking about Freddie and his illness during quiet moments at Garden Lodge, but I made sure he never saw me doing it. I’d go to bed and cry myself to sleep. Through the day I tried to put all thought of Freddie’s illness at the back of my mind, but in the still of the night it would come back to haunt me.

  We got back to London but Freddie couldn’t settle for long and soon we were off to Montreux for another short break. Freddie did a lot of window shopping that visit. He was taken with some plain, pure white porcelain in a shop window as we strolled by. He asked me why the porcelain was plain. I didn’t have a clue, so the next day I returned to the shop to ask. The man explained that the pieces were unfinished. They were delicately patterned only after the customer had placed their order. I told Freddie what I’d found out.

  The man who ran the shop turned out to be a famous porcelain artist called George Misere Shrira and we went back to see him. On closer examination the shop boasted some fabulous pieces of porcelain, including some Limoges pieces made in France. We bought some ashtrays and a few other things, and then Freddie asked whether the man would agree to paint any intricate design.

  He said: ‘Yes.’

  Freddie then commissioned from him two large table lamps with imperial designs on them. When they eventually reached Garden Lodge, Freddie was delighted with them. With their usual accuracy, the Sun reported that Freddie had bought a thirty-six-piece dinner service.

  Back in London we went to Peter Straker’s birthday party, held at the Xenon nightclub in Piccadilly. Tim Rice and Elaine Paige were there, and Freddie also met Fay Treadwell of the Drifters.

  As we started getting ready for Christmas and began hanging decorations, I also transformed the garden into something of a Winter Wonderland scene. In the magnolia tree by the gate I hung tiny white fairy lights. Freddie loved them so much that they never came down after that and he asked me to hang some in the other magnolia tree which could be seen from the bedroom window. Time and again I refused.

  ‘It’ll be too much,’ I would say. ‘It’ll make the place look like a fairy grotto.’

  Like Habitat furniture, I felt that a little went a long way. Less was more.

  Inside the house, I had great problems with the Christmas tree. It had been ordered specially, but, once in place and decorated, the needles began falling off. After a few days we had a completely bald tree.

  To Freddie it was a huge joke, but I wasn’t so happy. It was starting to look pathetic and Christmas was still to come. When I got the supplier to swap it for a healthier one, Freddie teased me that he preferred the other sorry specimen.

  In the days before Christmas Goliath started finding unusual places to sleep in. He always made himself scarce when visitors called, and one night as guests arrived he disappeared on cue. But after a few hours he still hadn’t resurfaced and Freddie became quite concerned. Had Goliath gone missing again, like the night when Freddie had offered a £1000 reward? We ran around looking for him. I went upstairs but couldn’t find him in any of the bedrooms. Then I found him asleep in the jacuzzi bathroom. It was such a serene scene that I left him sleeping and ran down to find Freddie.

  ‘Come on,’ I told him, ‘you’ve got to look at this.’

  Freddie came up, took one look at Goliath asleep in the marble washbasin and let out a hysterical scream. It became Goliath’s favourite spot to take a snooze, on a par with the laundry baskets for comfort.

  When Mary arrived at Garden Lodge for Christmas 1988 she took one look at the mound of presents beneath the tree and, joking, picked out the most beautifully wrapped present.

  ‘This must be mine!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Yes, it is, dear!’ said Freddie. When she opened it she was suitably astounded. Freddie had bought her a beautiful Cartier briefcase.

  Freddie always wanted my present to be a surprise, and that year he went to elaborate lengths to throw me off the scent. Terry had been despatched to buy a camp selection of presents to help me in the garden: white overalls, an over-sized pair of wellingtons and a stainless steel shovel. All were parcelled up colourfully and well disguised – even the shovel didn’t look like a shovel. Freddie watched as I unwrapped each in turn. He loved my giggly reactions and he exploded in laughter as each spoof present was unveiled.

  A little later he said: ‘They weren’t your real present – that’s under the tree.’ I unwrapped it to discover a fabulous piece of Lalique crystal, shaped like a cat.

  Then I gave Freddie my present to him, also crystal. It was a huge lead crystal and silver caviar bowl. Freddie always liked caviar and offered it freely to his guests.

  Freddie always threw Garden Lodge open to his friends on Boxing Day, and that year it was bursting at the seams. Peter Straker was appearing in the musical Blues in the Night at the Piccadilly Theatre, and half of the theatre world seemed to follow him to the party – Carol Woods, Debbie Bishop and her then boyfriend actor Nick ‘Hazell’ Ball and Stephanie Beacham plus her two daughters. One of the daughters was called Phoebe, just like Peter. Nick gave me a ball radio and a battery-operated child’s toy – small penguins waddling around a loop-track. That toy kept me and the cats occupied for hours. They’d wait for the little penguins to get to the top of the ski slope, then whack them all off.

  8

  THE RETREAT

  My fortieth birthday in January 1989 was one I wanted to forget, as it reminded me I was getting on a bit. But Freddie took me to the Meridian in Chelsea to celebrate. He said, ‘I’m taking you out tonight, as forty is the big birthday.’

  Mary came with us in the car and by the time we got there everyone was waiting – Joe, Phoebe, Peter Straker, Dave Clark, Graham Hamilton and his partner Gordon, yet another driver, and John Christie, a singer. Our table stretched along the full length of the restaurant window. And, by happy chance, Eartha Kitt was sitting at the next table with some rather gorgeous young hunks.

  ‘What would you like to drink?’ Freddie asked. ‘Go on. You can have anything tonight.’ He suggested champagne, but I stayed on still wine until the end of supper, when I slipped back bloated in my chair and sipped a brandy. Then Freddie fixed his eyes on me and all the lights in the restaurant dimmed. Waiters wheeled out a birthday cake which was typical of Freddie’s wild imagination: a three-dimensional iced model of the Garden Lodge conservatory. I looked around at Freddie and the others in astonishment, then blurted out: ‘You bastards!’

  I glanced at Freddie’s impish look of delight, then I kissed him.

  Phoebe’s birthday was four days after mine and we celebrated at the Bombay Brasserie, a very plush Indian restauran
t in west London. Phoebe’s cake really knocked him sideways. It depicted a dramatic scene from Othello.

  The same month Freddie released his duet ‘How Can I Go On?’ from the Barcelona album with Montserrat Caballé.

  On Valentine’s Day that year I bought Freddie two dozen roses in an unusual black colour. I arranged them in a vase and placed them in the hallway to greet Freddie when he came downstairs. He came out to me in the garden, kissed me and thanked me for them. A little later, his roses for me arrived.

  The following Sunday I was working in the garden when Freddie emerged from the house looking a ridiculous sight. He was wearing the out-sized white overalls and massive wellingtons he’d bought me as a joke at Christmas.

  ‘Now then, what are you doing?’ he asked me.

  I burst out laughing. He wanted to give a hand and tried helping me with a bit of weeding, but he didn’t know what he was looking for. In the end he just got under my feet so I marched indoors to encourage him to interfere in whatever Joe or Phoebe were doing instead.

  Not long afterwards I went to visit my family in Ireland. A neighbour of my mum’s, who lived in a bungalow opposite, had put her home on the market for £32,500 Irish punts (about £25,000 sterling). She asked me if I’d take back with me the estate agent’s particulars of the property to pin up in Irish pubs and clubs in London.

  Coincidentally, back home at Garden Lodge Freddie received a letter from a woman who ran a cat sanctuary. He had made a few large donations to her and she’d moved the operation to new premises, also a bungalow. He held up a photograph she’d sent of the property and studied it assiduously. I ran to fetch a picture of the bungalow in Ireland belonging to mum’s neighbour.

  ‘You think that’s a nice bungalow. How about this one?’ I asked, passing him the particulars. ‘Ooh,’ he sighed, studying the photograph carefully. ‘Is it for sale?’ he said. I told him it was.

  ‘Then buy it!’ he said, forgetting at first that on a salary of £600 a month it was well outside my range. Then he offered to lend me the money. I thought about it for a moment, but then said I’d rather stay independent and get a mortgage of my own. However, if that failed, perhaps we could talk again about a loan. I stressed that if I did borrow money from him it would all have to be done properly with my weekly repayments docked at source.

  I rang mum’s neighbour and made an offer on the bungalow. She accepted, but I did tell her that should anyone else come along to better my offer she’d be mad not to take it.

  I applied to the Bank of Ireland in Dublin for the mortgage. In the application form I simply said I worked as a gardener for Goose Productions Ltd, with no mention of Freddie Mercury.

  We spent most of 1989 between London and Montreux while Freddie and Queen worked in the studio. The first few months were spent putting the final touches to their album The Miracle.

  Freddie was always interested in Queen’s success in Britain and the rest of the world, but in all the time I was with him, he took no interest in how the band were doing in the USA. Queen had done well there, but the Americans weren’t too sure what to make of such an uninhibited and flamboyantly gay rock star. He had given up on the country and told me he had no intention of ever returning. The band was so universally popular elsewhere that he said it didn’t matter to him.

  Not that Freddie disliked America. He owned a sensational Art Deco penthouse apartment in New York in a building so exclusive that his seriously wealthy neighbours usually frowned on rock stars, however famous they were. In Freddie’s case they made an exception as he turned out to be a model tenant.

  The apartment had sensational views of the Chrysler Building and beyond. Its Art Deco decor and fittings, with lots of mirrored panels, were original, and Freddie had furnished it in keeping with the period.

  In all the time Freddie and I were together the flat remained unoccupied. Gerry Stickles, the band’s tour manager, was based in America and kept an eye on the property for Freddie. Phoebe would also be despatched occasionally to take a look at the place and stay in it for a few days. On some trips Freddie would ask him to bring back a few small treasures he wanted – a beautiful crystal vase or a delicate porcelain bowl.

  One story always trotted out as a so-called exclusive about Freddie’s time in America concerned his working with eccentric singer Michael Jackson. They spent only a short time together in a studio, working on collaborations which never saw the light of day because they were never actually finished.

  Freddie told me they had worked on a rap number. More memorable for him was an unusual invitation from the singer. Although he had liked Michael Jackson as far as their brief friendship went, he felt he didn’t understand Freddie’s sense of humour and had even frowned on his liking of cocaine. The most memorable part of the experience was suitably wacky. Jackson offered Freddie an unusual invitation – to visit his llamas. Freddie was dressed, typically, in white trousers, but agreed.

  ‘That was a mistake,’ Freddie said. ‘When we got there I was up to my knees in llama shit.’

  I was flabbergasted one day when, speaking to the Dublin branch of my bank about the mortgage, the man on the other end said: ‘I hear you work for Freddie Mercury.’ How did he know? I hadn’t said a word. I’d done everything I could to keep that fact secret.

  Still, it proved the end of my plan to buy the bungalow. I went back to Ireland just before Easter and mum’s neighbour began shouting at me. She said she’d had other offers, so I asked her why she hadn’t accepted one, as I’d suggested. What with one thing and another, my dream of buying the bungalow foundered.

  Mum knew I was disappointed and made a suggestion. ‘Why don’t you have half of my garden and build your own house? At least then you’ll have exactly what you want,’ she said. The idea had possibilities, especially as I came from a family of builders. Later that day I bought my mum a new washing machine as her old one had broken. ‘That’s lovely,’ she said, as I wheeled it in. ‘That’s in payment for the land then!’

  When I got back to Garden Lodge, I told Freddie of mum’s offer of the land and he was very positive about the idea of building my own place. In fact he said he would help me build the house. So I contacted my nephew Jim Sheehan, a building engineer who’d studied architecture, and we arranged to get the idea to the drawing board.

  The same year Freddie decided he would buy a flat in Munich with Barbara Valentin. They would split the cost of the property equally and do the same with the decorating bills; they both had equally expensive tastes. Furthermore, in the event of either of them dying, it was agreed that total ownership would pass to the other.

  Freddie seemed to like the idea of sharing something very special with Barbara. She found an apartment and Freddie was enthusiastic about the project for months; then his interest waned. He knew he was unlikely to get any real use out of the flat; he would almost certainly die first. There was no escaping the fact that he was losing his battle against his illness.

  Freddie had taken to covering the marks of his KS with makeup whenever he went out in public, but it didn’t seem very practical to me. So I suggested he grew a short beard, enough to cover the blemishes, which he did. The beard inevitably made headlines before long.

  One day, after working on the plans for the house with Jim Sheehan, the two of us went out for a drink. It was the first day the pubs in England were allowed to open all day, and we celebrated the event with lots of drinks. I got back to Garden Lodge ten hours later, steaming drunk. From then on, with Freddie’s encouragement, I often went out to drink on my own. Freddie warned me that I could lose my friends because of our relationship and urged me to remain in contact with them. It was a kind suggestion from Freddie, who had been thinking a lot about how I would manage alone. I guess he knew I’d have to call on my friends when he was dead and I was back on my own again. And I guess he knew that my slipping out for a drink now and then helped take things off my mind.

  After several meetings Jim Sheehan and I completed the plans fo
r a rambling three-bedroomed Irish retreat. Freddie pored over them, thinking through which rooms were going where. Finally he approved them.

  Then we discussed money. The Bank of Ireland mortgage had fallen through and I was going to have to take up Freddie’s offer of a loan. My family’s estimate to build the house was £32,000 and Freddie agreed to the amount. The money would be a loan, and Mary would arrange for regular repayments to be taken from my wages.

  In May Queen stormed the album charts with The Miracle and the single charts with ‘I Want It All’. This was their first new material for three years and was long awaited. But even before the records were in the shops Freddie wanted to push on with recording more material.

  Queen were dazed by Freddie’s eagerness to return to the stresses of the studio. I don’t think any of them had thought about going back to recording so soon after briefly coming up for air after The Miracle.

  But they all said ‘Yes’ in unison.

  The same month, on the 20th, Freddie arranged for us to go out with the band and their partners to possibly the world’s greatest restaurant, Freddie Girardet’s, at Crissier, near Lausanne in Switzerland. A stream of fourteen delectable nouvelle cuisine dishes were served, accompanied by some equally delicious wines. Brian’s girlfriend, actress Anita Dobson, made me laugh when she said: ‘I’d rather have bangers and mash!’ The bill for the night ran into thousands. Freddie Girardet signed our menu ‘To Freddie and Jim’.

  Around the same time the same group met up for a quiet supper near the studio in a restaurant called the Bavaria. That was the night when Freddie admitted to the band that he was not well.

  Someone at the table was suffering from a cold and the conversation got round to the curse of illness. Freddie still looked fairly well, but he rolled up his right trouser leg and raised his leg to the table to let the others see the painful, open wound weeping on the side of the calf.