by Jim Hutton
Around noon on Christmas Eve I set off to buy myself a pair of denim jeans in Earl’s Court. I felt furious with myself for having shown Freddie his present. As I passed the little antique shop, the owner was just unlocking and noticed me.
‘Those glasses you bought,’ he said.
‘Yes?’ I answered.
‘I meant to say when you bought them, I’ve got another half dozen inside,’ he said. ‘They’re part of a set of twelve.’
‘How much?’ I asked. He offered a slight discount, and I bought them. I raced back to Garden Lodge, kept well away from Freddie, wrapped them up and placed them under the tree.
On Christmas morning I woke up with excruciating toothache. It was so bad I had to find an emergency dentist and he took my tooth out.
Like me, Freddie loathed dentists. He went for a check-up once a year. He was in both agony and ecstasy when being worked on by the hygienist, because he loved her aggressiveness when she was at the job. He would come out afterwards and say: ‘She really gets at them!’
Freddie’s teeth protruded because other teeth had grown behind his front ones. They should have been taken out when he was a child, but it hadn’t happened. After he became successful he said he’d have them fixed, but the truth is he wasn’t vain enough to bother about them. And he knew his teeth were his trademark – the one thing that caricatures of him always made a point of.
Although his teeth were so prominent, I think he had a lovely smile. He became self-conscious and embarrassed only when he was having a really hearty laugh – when he guffawed like a donkey and showed all his teeth off. Then his hand would fly to hide the lower part of his face.
After Christmas lunch we went to open our presents. I took my present for Freddie from underneath the tree and handed it to him. As he tore the paper off and spied the dark red goblets beneath, he looked up at me.
‘These are in the cupboard!’ he said.
‘No, they’re not,’ I told him. ‘These are another six.’
They were given pride of place in a display cabinet.
Freddie was now beginning to become very frail, but 1991 started terrifically for him in musical terms. The release of the single ‘Innuendo’ in the middle of January took him and Queen right back to the place they deserved, the top of the charts. The album came out in February and also shot straight to the top.
On Valentine’s Day Freddie was out of the house recording the video to ‘I’m Going Slightly Mad’, which would be their next single release. But that didn’t stop Freddie playing a joke on me. The cats and I had Garden Lodge to ourselves, as Phoebe was out and Joe and Terry were with Freddie at the shoot. The phone rang. It was Terry, asking if Phoebe had ‘got what Freddie wanted’. Just then Phoebe came in and I passed the phone across. Freddie came on the line and I heard Phoebe tell him: ‘I’ve only got one of them.’
When Freddie got home, at about 8pm, I was sitting in an armchair alone in the lounge, with the hallway door closed. When he arrived there were whispers in the hall, then a flurry of activity. He came in carrying a large package wrapped in brown paper.
‘Surprise!’ he said, handing me the large, heavy, oblong shape.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘It’s a surprise!’ said Freddie, bright-eyed. I then unwrapped a beautiful gilt-framed Victorian oil painting that I’d noticed a day or so earlier in a Sotheby’s auction catalogue. Its subject was two small kittens playing with a snail on a garden path and it was titled Surprise.
‘I know exactly where we’re going to put it, as well,’ added Freddie.
‘Where?’ I asked.
‘You can shift that picture there,’ he said, pointing to a part of the wall which could be seen from all angles. It stayed there for a while, but Freddie had really bought it with the Irish retreat in mind.
Freddie also bought a second picture. It was massive, and the only picture of a man that he bought. It was of a young boy looking radiant and strong as he stood on life’s threshold. It was sent off immediately for essential restoration work, and we didn’t see it for some months.
Freddie was very weak for the filming of the video for ‘I’m Going Slightly Mad’. He had to be caked in make-up and wore a thick black wig.
Because he looked so different, when I turned up one day to take a look I didn’t recognise him. There were also some penguins there for the shoot and in quiet moments Freddie took himself off to be with them and give them water. Under studio lights they were baking and, ill as he was, he was only concerned for their welfare.
‘It’s far too hot for them,’ he complained. It was really a distraction to keep his mind off his own problems.
Freddie decided he wanted to buy a place in Montreux. He took some of us to the Duck House for a holiday – including Mary and baby Richard and Terry and his family. One day we all went off to look at a serene fifties’ chalet-style lake-house with its own moorings and, what I fancied, a garden. But it wasn’t suitable; because of the security we really needed a flat. And we wouldn’t be living there for most of the time.
Then Jim Beach found a three-bedroomed penthouse flat in an exquisite building called La Tourelle. We flew over to see it. It was parquet-floored throughout with a spacious sitting room, large windows and a balcony looking across the lake and city. There was also a second, smaller, cosier sitting room, and at the back a kitchen and three bedrooms – for Joe, Freddie and me.
When I got back to London I received an urgent phone call from my sister Patricia. She said that for months the Daily Mirror had been trying to track down the location of our Irish hideaway. They had offered £1000 to the man who had transported several pieces of furniture over for us to give them the address. The paper was under the impression that they had a hot exclusive: Freddie Mercury had secretly moved to Ireland to hide from the world. Instead they settled for ‘revealing’ to my family that I was gay. My family already knew and couldn’t care less. The press were quickly sent packing.
One time when I got home from another flying visit to Ireland I sat in the kitchen with Freddie, showing him the latest photographs of the bungalow’s progress. It was turning out to be monstrous, the kind of thing Prince Charles might call a carbuncle. But Freddie was pleased with the way it looked, and he said how much he would like to see it for himself.
‘Well, why don’t you?’ I said. ‘We can get an early morning flight out of Heathrow. We’ll be in Dublin by ten and it’ll take another couple of hours.’
‘Will I have to meet all your family?’ he asked.
That’s how shy he was.
‘No, you won’t have to meet the family,’ I told him. ‘The only one you might meet is my mother.’
Freddie knew that that wouldn’t be a problem. He thought for a moment and got very interested in the idea. He suggested that perhaps we could hire a helicopter to get us there even more quickly, and I made some enquiries.
But a few days later Freddie’s enthusiasm fizzled out. Ireland was unknown territory to him and he would find that hard going. And his illness was making him weaker and more tired than he was letting on. He wasn’t strong enough for a six-hour round trip anywhere. It was enough just to find the will to carry on.
He never did set foot in the bungalow, but it feels like he’s been there. He followed its progress so closely at all stages that I see and feel him in every room.
Around April 1991 Joe became depressed about his Aids. He poured out his heart to Freddie, and said that he worried that when Freddie died he wouldn’t have a home any more. Freddie’s compassion kicked in at once.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘You find a house and I’ll buy it for you.’
A few weeks later Joe found a small house in Chiswick which Freddie bought for him.
10
LETTING GO
In May 1991 Queen released their single ‘Headlong’. The lyrics seemed to sum up what was facing us at Garden Lodge: ‘You’re rushing headlong out of control, and you think you’re so strong. But there ain’t
no stopping, and there’s nothing you can do about it at all.’ There was certainly no way of reversing Freddie’s weakening condition and we all knew it. But he was cheered greatly by his new flat in Switzerland. We went over to Montreux a couple of times to see it. Freddie knew exactly how he wanted the flat decorated and chose everything himself. The only thing that Joe and I were allowed to choose was the colour of our bedrooms – pastel green and pastel blue respectively. On the first visit Freddie wanted an instant garden created on the balconies, so I was sent off to blow a small fortune on plants.
‘I want plenty of everything and lots of greenery,’ said Freddie.
Three hours later the balconies were transformed, and complemented the extraordinary views out across the lake.
Freddie hired Montreux’s most exclusive interior designers, demanding vehemently that the whole thing must be finished by Christmas which he’d decided to spend quietly there.
The last picture Freddie bought was a fabulous Tissot from Christie’s. It was a portrait of the artist’s mistress, Kathleen Newton, in a bonnet with her left hand delicately raised to her cheek. Freddie paid £160,000 for it. But there was a sad side to the picture, and it was deeply ironic. Kathleen Newton looked fit and well in the picture, but in fact she was suffering from a terminal illness. She died young a short time after the picture was painted.
That summer Freddie posed for a camera for the very last time – mine. It happened like this. I was out in the garden photographing some of the flowers in full bloom and Freddie walked towards me. I trained the lens on him and he told me to hold on – he wanted to move back a bit so it wasn’t a close-up. Then he posed while I took four pictures, and he managed a smile for each. He was so pale and drawn that he knew he didn’t look his best, but it didn’t matter a bit; of all the pictures I have of Freddie, those are the ones I love most.
In August we heard that Paul Prenter had died from Aids. Freddie was visibly shaken. Freddie knew Paul had the disease but I don’t think he realised how quickly it might claim his life. Paul’s death troubled him for many weeks, and inevitably reminded him of his own fate.
The same month I asked Freddie what he wanted for his birthday. ‘Some lovely Irish crystal champagne glasses for the flat in Switzerland,’ he said. So, on the way home from a visit to Ireland, that’s what I bought and, unlike the previous year, this time I kept them a complete secret. For most of the next few weeks I hid myself in my workshop, making a presentation box in wood to keep the new glasses in. I French polished it, then lined it with blue velvet.
Freddie’s birthday, 5 September 1991, was a very quiet affair. He came downstairs in the morning in his dressing gown for a cup of tea. ‘My God,’ I thought to myself. He seemed to look so frail that day.
With us in the kitchen were Mary and Dave Clark, who’d both come by to wish him a happy birthday. The box I was giving Freddie was hidden from him in a kitchen cupboard and, after Mary and Dave had given him their presents, I thought it was time for mine, too.
‘Well,’ I said to Freddie, taking the box from the cupboard, ‘happy birthday.’ He looked at the box and ran his hands over it, saying how beautiful it was. A few minutes later it dawned on me that Freddie thought the gift was the box itself, and he seemed happy enough with that.
‘Aren’t you going to open it, then?’ asked Dave, who knew the glasses were inside. When Freddie did, he looked so surprised. ‘Well, you did say you’d like some lovely champagne glasses for the flat in Montreux,’ I said. Sadly, the glasses never did get to Switzerland.
Freddie’s forty-fifth birthday was perhaps the quietest of his life. He was very aware that he wasn’t on top form and that he could no longer disguise the fact that he was coming to the end of his life. He didn’t want a huge bash for his friends because he didn’t want them to see how sad he looked. The only thing he wanted from anyone for his last birthday was privacy.
Yet the press were still on his tail. One day we went for lunch to Pontevecchio’s in Earl’s Court. The manager told us that a News of the World reporter and photographer were hanging around outside, waiting for Freddie to emerge. Liam Byrne, the manager of the Coleherne pub nearby, had phoned to tip us off. So Freddie and I made our exit by the back door.
In October the band released their single ‘The Show Must Go On’, with the B-side ‘Keep Yourself Alive’. As Freddie expected, the press weren’t slow to report its questioning, haunting lyrics. They speculated on possible hidden meanings in lyrics like ‘What are we living for?’ and ‘I’ll soon be turning round the corner now’ at a time when he looked so frail. To me, the most autobiographical line was: ‘My make-up may be flaking but my smile still stays on.’ That was true. No matter how ill Freddie felt, he never grumbled to anyone or sought sympathy of any kind. It was his battle, no one else’s, and he always wore a brave face against the ever-increasing odds against him.
The last video Freddie made was for the single ‘These Are the Days of Our Lives’. (It was released, shortly after his death, on the flip-side of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’.) It seemed a very apt swansong. When Freddie was making the video he looked worse than I had ever seen him. Now the thick make-up he used to disguise the markings on his face only seemed to highlight his gaunt features. The security at the studio was very tight and only the essential technicians were there. During the shoot, Diana Moseley and I sat on the edge of the stage at Freddie’s feet. At the end of the final take, Freddie gave a cheeky little grin and winked at me. I turned crimson, prompting Diana to say: ‘For goodness sake, Jim, pull yourself together.’
Freddie was now very feeble, but he did summon up the strength to host one last special dinner party at Garden Lodge. It was to thank all the doctors who had nursed him through his illness. Dr Gordon Atkinson was there along with five other specialists, including a man called Dr Graham Moyle.
No one around that table knew of my condition, although I feel some may have had their suspicions. During the meal, Dr Moyle got around to the subject of my taking an Aids test. He didn’t beat around the bush.
‘Have the test,’ he said. ‘If you turn out to be HIV positive at least you’ll know. And if you test negative you’ll lose nothing more than a few grey hairs.’
I knew the answer anyway. A second opinion was likely to do nothing more than reinforce the sad truth. Still, taking a second test seemed a good idea, so I agreed.
Freddie wanted to visit the flat in Switzerland one last time. We flew there in a private jet: the two of us, Joe, Terry and Freddie’s long-standing friend Tony King, who was Mick Jagger’s assistant.
I went to see Dr Atkinson at his surgery to let him take a blood sample for the Aids test. As it would take a while to get the results back from the lab, he promised he would phone me in Montreux the moment he got them.
It was our third visit to the flat in Montreux, and it was clear that Freddie and I wouldn’t be there together for a fourth and our planned quiet Christmas. We went out to restaurants every night for ten days, but now Freddie was very slow and needed a helping hand to walk.
He used the Swiss trip to find some peace in which to make a few final decisions. It was during that visit that he made the important decision to come off his medication and die. He decided not to let any of us know what he was doing. The fight against his disease was over; he was ready to slip away without any further struggle.
During our time at the flat Freddie began spending more time in his bedroom, retreating to his bed in T-shirt and boxer shorts to doze for large parts of the day. We took it in turns to look after him. Tony King stayed with Freddie the whole day, and Joe and I would leave Freddie to sleep when he felt too weak to chat.
Four days before we were due to return to London, Dr Atkinson was due to phone with the results of my Aids test. Although I knew what the result would be, I was a bundle of nerves. It was a one-in-a-million chance that the result of the first test had been a mistake. Freddie and Joe didn’t know I was expecting a call that morning. Joe was around and I
couldn’t sit next to Freddie lying on the sofa watching television; I couldn’t relax.
I paced the room for hours waiting for the call. I kept wondering how Freddie would take the news if I decided to come clean about my own condition. After I had almost worn the carpet bare from walking around in circles, Freddie asked me what was the matter.
‘I’m bloody annoyed with our doctor,’ I said. ‘He promised me he’d phone with the results of the Aids test today.’
‘Why don’t you phone him yourself?’ Freddie said.
I did. I got through and the doctor was very matter of fact about it all.
‘I’m sorry, darling,’ he said, ‘you’re HIV positive.’
I rang off and looked at Freddie.
‘Well, what’s the result?’ he said.
‘I’m positive,’ I replied.
The colour drained from his face.
‘The bastards,’ he said, referring to whoever had given it to him, and whoever had given it to that person, and so on along the endless chain.
Later in the day, while Freddie was resting, Joe and I talked about my condition. He said he and Freddie knew what the result would be before I’d even made the call; I was pale and the outcome was written all over my face.
I became very depressed by it all. Regardless of my fate, I finally came to accept that Freddie wasn’t going to live much longer. We were in the last few days before the end.
Most of the time I simply wanted to cry. While Freddie was asleep, I would go for a short walk or sit alone chain-smoking. I’d walk through the night rather than go to bed, as I knew I wouldn’t sleep. One time Tony joined me in a long, slow walk around the lake. We got chatting.
He told me of some of the things he and Freddie had been discussing. With me in mind, Tony asked Freddie: ‘What’s going to happen to the boys?’
‘Well, Jim will be staying in Garden Lodge,’ Freddie replied.
