Mercury and Me

by Jim Hutton

  ‘You think you’ve got problems!’ he told them. ‘Well, look at this. Look what I have to put up with.’

  Everyone was very shocked but also very sympathetic. Then, as quickly as he’d mentioned it, Freddie brushed the subject aside.

  I think the band had all been well aware that Freddie was seriously ill, and his leg that night was the confirmation they had all been expecting.

  Back in Britain, the papers reported that Freddie had been in a dramatic accident in the Swiss Alps when his car had spun out of control. The reports were totally without foundation.

  However, rumours about his health were stirred up when he gave an interview to the DJ Mike Read for Radio One. Freddie said he didn’t want to tour again; he felt he had toured enough and was getting too old to go strutting around stages any more. The truth was that he was getting too weak to take on such a schedule ever again. The press interpreted his remarks differently, claiming that by refusing to tour he had caused another bust-up in the band and that once again they were about to split, this time for good.

  ‘It shows what they know,’ said Freddie when I showed him the reports.

  Far from being on the verge of going their separate ways, the band was already working on what would come to be thought of as their greatest album. It was Innuendo, their last.

  While in Montreux one week with Freddie, I picked up some catalogues for beautifully made precision model train sets. The top-of-the-range was a beauty, the gold-plated Rhinegold. Freddie and I were looking at the catalogues in Garden Lodge when he said he wanted to buy me a model train and it would be a Rhinegold. A stockist near Oxford Street had one for sale and I set off to buy it at once. When I got home I began making a table for it, with miniature mountains and scenery. I couldn’t rest the board on its side, as it could get damaged too easily, so it used to be kept on top of Freddie’s Rolls Royce in the garage adjoining my workshop.

  Freddie’s Rolls went back a very long time. He had bought it in the seventies, long before my time with him. Word had it that Freddie signed his very first record contract in the back of a Rolls and it was something he always wanted as soon as he could afford it. Yet he seldom used the car. I didn’t go out in it once, though I did drive it in and out of the garage when I wanted to play with my trains. In fact, Freddie preferred to be driven around in a Mercedes.

  That summer I flew back to Ireland to apply for planning permission for my house. The plans were duly passed, and I rushed home to tell Freddie.

  ‘I’ve got the go-ahead to build my house,’ I told him.

  ‘That’s our house!’ he said, and from that moment Freddie only ever talked enthusiastically of our house. It was never ‘yours’ or ‘mine’; it was always ours – just as he always reminded me that Garden Lodge was our home.

  The video for Queen’s single ‘Breakthru’, released in June, was a first – it was the first Queen video not to be made in a studio. Instead the band were to be filmed hurtling along on the back of a steam train, renamed The Miracle Express. A private railway was used for the two-day shoot: the Nene Valley, in Cambridgeshire. A location shoot depends on good weather, so we prayed for sunshine for the two days and, thankfully, got them. They were swelterers.

  The location had been kept a closely guarded secret to keep the fans at bay, but they turned up in hordes all the same. The local radio station announced Queen’s visit to the whole of Cambridgeshire. When we pulled up at the Nene Valley railway station there were fans everywhere. It all added to the fabulous atmosphere.

  While Freddie was filming I commandeered Graham Hamilton, Freddie’s stand-in driver, to take me to Cambridge. I had decided to buy Freddie and me some pairs of shorts. Graham and I asked one of the police officers guarding the station how far Cambridge was, and he was more than helpful.

  ‘I’ll escort you in,’ he said. ‘I’m about to go back anyway.’

  So I went shopping in Cambridge that day with a police escort.

  Even though Freddie was constantly working that year, he still wallowed in his domestic routine at Garden Lodge. Busy as he was, nothing ever escaped his attention.

  When the koi started spawning there was so much of the stuff I had to keep pulling it out of the pool by the bucket-load to prevent the adult koi from eating them. This time many young fish survived. The holding tank wasn’t big enough for all of them so I had to cull some. While I was doing this I decided to put a small fish I’d bred the year before out of its misery. It was deformed, swam badly and had difficulty eating. I killed it with a quick rap to the head.

  When Freddie came into the garden, without being told, he guessed what I’d done.

  ‘Where is it?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve killed it,’ I told him.

  ‘How?’ he asked. When I told him he hit the roof. He said that if I ever had to kill fish again I must find a more humane way of doing so. On Freddie’s instructions I rang the fish specialist, Neil Porter, who sent me special powder to kill the fish humanely.

  Getting up one morning in Garden Lodge, Freddie asked me if I could make him another small table for our bedroom – identical to the first. My face dropped.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

  ‘Why didn’t you ask me to do this when I was making the first one?’ I said. ‘Now you’ll get different shades of mahogany when they could both have been made from the same cut of wood.’

  However, I hoped to be able to reproduce a similar tone with wood dyes. When Freddie found me later in the day, I was measuring up the first table.

  ‘Didn’t you draw plans for that table?’ he asked.

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ I said.

  ‘If you drew plans you wouldn’t have any trouble at all,’ he said. ‘All you’d have to do is go back to your plans to make another.’

  ‘Well, I never make plans for these things,’ I said. He seemed surprised. His would have been a much more organised approach.

  But when I showed Freddie the finished table he was delighted, and from then on the two tables sat either side of the bedroom door, covered in framed pictures and bits and pieces.

  Some time later Freddie bought a number of ormolu furniture brasses.

  ‘I’ve got a marvellous idea,’ he said. ‘Now I’ve got all this ormolu brass, let’s put some on those two tables you’ve made,’ he said.

  ‘It will ruin them,’ I told him. ‘These are just plain, simple little tables.’

  ‘It won’t,’ Freddie insisted. ‘They’ll work perfectly, I know they will. I know about these things.’

  He ran out of the room to find the large bag of ormolu fittings and started choosing which he wanted where. Once they were arranged, they did look good.

  Freddie took great pride in the tables and always showed them off to visitors, telling them: ‘My husband made them for me.’

  I also made a hinged wooden box, just for something to do, and Freddie commandeered it for himself as soon as he saw it. He came into the workshop while I was polishing it.

  ‘What are you making that for?’ he asked.

  ‘No reason,’ I said. ‘I’m just tinkering about.’

  ‘Can I have it for my private papers?’ he said.

  ‘Of course, but perhaps I’d better put a lock on it,’ I added. I searched everywhere for a lock small enough. In the end I took one from an old sewing machine which had belonged to my grandmother.

  When I handed over the box to Freddie he put it on show in our bedroom. But he never used it to store anything. It didn’t need a lock after all.

  We had some great news at Garden Lodge when Mary announced she was expecting Piers Cameron’s baby. So now, during our regular trips to Montreux, baby clothes and toys were also on the shopping list.

  During the pregnancy a cruel story appeared in the papers suggesting Freddie had struck a love-pact to ‘father’ a child for Mary, her child by Piers. It was unfair and untrue. So was the suggestion that Freddie would become godfather to the baby. When the story appeared, Freddie sug
gested some sound advice to Mary.

  ‘What you should do now, darling,’ he said, ‘is get a nice photograph of you and Piers and release it to the press.’ But Mary preferred to deal with the matter her own way and did nothing.

  In August, as the group’s single ‘The Invisible Man’ hit the streets, we had a newcomer at Garden Lodge, another kitten. I spotted it in a pet shop in Kensington High Street, where it sat on its own in the window bawling its head off. It was very big-boned with grey, white and black striped markings. I popped in and asked Colin, the owner, how much it was – £25. I thought it was too much, so I left it and went on my merry way. When I got back to Garden Lodge I told Phoebe and Joe about it.

  ‘If you like the kitten that much, why don’t you buy it?’ they said. I told them I thought Freddie would go up the wall if another cat arrived. Then I had a change of heart and headed off to the shop. By the time I got there, three women were haggling with Colin over the kitten. They each wanted him, but balked at the prospect of having to buy a £5 cardboard carrier. Leaving the women to fight amongst themselves, Colin called over: ‘Yes, Jim, can I help you?’

  ‘How much is the cat?’ I asked, although I already knew the answer.

  ‘£25,’ he replied. I took £25 from my pocket and gave it to him.

  ‘There you are,’ I said. The cat’s sold. I hope you don’t mind, ladies.’ And I swept out with the kitten in a cardboard carrier.

  The Mews gave us a second entrance to Garden Lodge, so to avoid Freddie I slipped in that way with the cat carrier. I didn’t want to have to admit that I’d bought the cat, but blow me if I didn’t bump straight into him.

  ‘I’ve got something here,’ I said. ‘If you don’t like it then I’m going to give it to Anna Nicholas.’ Anna was an actress friend of Freddie’s who, only a few days earlier, had been asking him where she could buy some cats. I knew she’d be happy to give it a home if Freddie didn’t want it.

  ‘What is it?’ Freddie asked.

  ‘I’m serious,’ I said. ‘If you don’t like this …’

  I opened the box and Freddie peeped inside.

  ‘You bastard!’ he said. I could tell from the expression on his face that the kitten could stay. He soon decreed that the kitten should be called Romeo.

  ‘He’s going to be a very big cat, too,’ I added quickly. ‘Even bigger than Oscar.’ In fact, Romeo grew to be a real bruiser of a cat.

  Not long after little Romeo had arrived I got important news from Ireland. The family were ready to start building the bungalow, so I went to Freddie for the money. He filled in a cheque and passed it across to me. When I looked at it I tried passing it back as it was for several thousand pounds more than I needed.

  ‘No,’ I told him. ‘It’s only going to cost £32,000 at the most.’

  ‘But that’s only a reckoned figure,’ he replied. ‘That’s why there’s a bit more.’ He paused for a moment, then added: ‘This is a present.’

  I did protest, though probably not as strongly as I should have. Actually, it turned out to be such a big bungalow that the money Freddie gave me still wasn’t quite enough. I didn’t tell Freddie, but I secretly took out a small mortgage for £15,000 to make up the shortfall.

  Anyway, encouraged by Freddie, for the next nine months or so I went to and from Ireland for brief visits to see how the building work was progressing.

  Each time I set off he’d tell me: ‘Take as many pictures of our house as possible.’ I’d take either the still or video camera and I would show Freddie the latest development when I got back. He wanted to know everything.

  From time to time, instead of Joe cooking supper Freddie would send one of us out to buy a takeaway meal. He liked the odd hamburger, but only Wendy hamburgers, or better still fish and chips which we’d eat straight from the paper. Freddie would insist we bought an extra six fish – one for each of the cats – and it was always my job to prepare them for them. To keep Freddie happy I had to take off all the batter and check for bones so none of them would choke.

  By 1989 my dreadful, unstoppable snoring was beginning to take its toll on my life with Freddie. It kept him awake. And when I went out drinking it became even louder.

  One night I was snoring my head off in bed next to Freddie and he tried turning me over so I would stop. It didn’t work. Eventually he got so annoyed that he pushed his knee into my back and it woke me up.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I said.

  ‘Snoring!’ he growled.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘If it’s that bad I’ll go into the guest room.’ So I got up and left him to sleep in peace.

  The Pink Room, our sparsely furnished large guest bedroom, was only a few steps down from the master bedroom. It had a large bed and a big unit, a self-standing triple mirror and a couch so big it had been brought in through the window – Freddie decreed it was for our house in Ireland when it was finished. Off the bedroom were an en suite bathroom and a dressing area.

  My move into the Pink Room was part-time at first. Most nights I’d sleep with Freddie, but if I was likely to snore I crept off to sleep on my own.

  That October in Switzerland, Freddie was working with the band and suddenly gave up smoking for good. It happened like this. For most of the year Queen had been working in the tiny Mountain Studios in Montreux where the control room was minuscule. When Brian walked into the room one morning he quickly backed out, complaining that the room was far too smoky for him.

  ‘Right,’ Freddie demanded, ‘no more smoking in the control room.’ It seemed slightly unfair on the studio engineer, Dave Richards, because he couldn’t go for a cigarette whenever he wanted. But there and then is when Freddie gave up cigarettes.

  Although he’d cut down to milder brands, Freddie often had catarrh on his chest first thing in the morning caused by smoking. He’d get up and start coughing and spitting. In Switzerland he got up one morning and spluttered so badly I told him he had to cut down. Then I lit up myself.

  Freddie never missed smoking from that day on. He’d been smoking all his life yet he hadn’t become hooked. I was and still am.

  Towards the end of 1989 Tiffany the cat was dying of cancer. One morning in October she was clearly in agony and looked as if she didn’t have long to live. Before Freddie was awake I took her to our vet, Keith Butt. He came straight to the point: ‘Jim, we really should put her down. But I’ll leave the decision up to you.’

  I left Tiffany with him and went back to the house to consult Freddie. I told him Keith’s verdict on the sick animal. Freddie was crushed. Mary arrived and Freddie told her what was going on. We all knew the decision we had to make, and after a few moments Freddie agreed. Mary accompanied me back to the vet’s, where Tiffany was given an injection and instantly fell asleep.

  ‘That’s it, Jim,’ said Mary softly.

  Tiffany was cremated and her ashes buried in a little casket, just as Freddie wanted, outside, and exactly in the middle of, the enormous dining room window. It was very touching.

  The same month Queen released their latest single ‘Scandal’; the B-side was ‘My Life Has Been Saved’. The band’s next hit, which came out at the end of November, was The Miracle album.

  That Christmas I decided to make the Rhinegold train set the centre-piece for the Garden Lodge decorations, and I transformed the board into an enchanting snow-scene. Twelve days before Christmas we started putting up the decorations in earnest. I decided the only place my train scene could go was on Freddie’s black grand piano in the lounge. I cleared all the photographs away, placed polystyrene blocks on the lid to protect it from scratches, and lowered the board in place. Then I set up the train.

  When Freddie went into the lounge I heard him hitting the roof, so I ran in after him. Freddie said he loved the idea of the train-set, but he wasn’t at all happy that it was on his piano: it might scratch the lid. I pointed out the lengths I’d gone to in order to protect it, and then he calmed down and said it was fine.

  That afternoon he helpe
d me deck the two double doors from the hall with red and white painted twigs from which red and silver balls dangled.

  ‘There’s something not quite right,’ Freddie said. ‘It needs a little umphing.’

  ‘It’s got the balls,’ I replied.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It needs something else.’ He fetched a big jar of Quality Street chocolates. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Throw some of these up there.’ We both agreed they made a big difference.

  On Christmas morning, Freddie came to me.

  ‘I’d like you to do something,’ he said softly.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘I’d like you to put a little bunch of flowers where Tiffany is buried.’

  Boxing Day that year was especially memorable for everyone at Garden Lodge, thanks to a little surprise laid on by Freddie. When we got to the dining table, by each place Freddie had laid a small present of outrageous costume jewellery – a brooch or a trinket – from Butler and Wilson. There was one for everybody – Phoebe, Joe, Mary, Peter Straker, Dave Clark, Graham Hamilton and his boyfriend Gordon. Some got little silver poodles on chains, others tiny golfers or a musical clef. But I got the best of all: an outrageous tie-pin set with a huge, transparent cut stone.

  When Jim Beach came to visit Freddie over Christmas he fell in love with my train-set. When he decided to buy one for his son and asked me to set it up for him, I was happy to oblige. Jim was the band’s manager, but he was always very much their employee. I got on very well with him, but I don’t think he could understand the relationship Freddie and I had; nor did it matter. He knew I made Freddie happy, so that made him happy, too.

  The New Year started with Jim trying to find a new record deal for Queen in America. They had been with Capitol for a number of years but weren’t happy with their treatment, so the band bought back the rights to their back catalogue in the USA. It put them in a strong negotiating position.

  Early in 1990, when we’d had Romeo for several months, Freddie and I were walking into the conservatory, quickly followed by four of the cats. Suddenly Romeo turned on Goliath, Delilah and Miko and starting fighting. I looked at Freddie and called out ‘Rambo!’