by Jim Hutton
Tony, astonished, told him: ‘But Mary doesn’t get on with Jim.’
According to Tony that night, Freddie answered: ‘Well, they’ll just have to work it out, won’t they?’ I wasn’t surprised to hear that Mary didn’t like me.
A few days later Freddie and I were together on the sofa in the lounge watching an old thirties’ black-and-white movie. The heroine asked her partner: ‘Will we spend the rest of our lives together?’ Freddie looked at me and asked the same thing.
‘Of course we will,’ I answered. ‘Don’t be silly.’
A lump came into my throat.
Coming back from Switzerland, Freddie was in good spirits. We’d arranged for him to be sped through customs. In his final few weeks he’d refer to it proudly. ‘Even Liz Taylor doesn’t get away with that, dear!’ he’d say.
Of course, Freddie was given special permission to avoid the queues at customs and passport control because he was so ill. He tired easily and looked terrible, and it would have been cruel to allow him to attract the attentions of the crowd. None of us were allowed to accompany Freddie and for a while he was split from the rest of us, dependent on total strangers for the first time in years. We tried protesting, but it was no use. We still had to go through immigration like everyone else while poor frail Freddie was left in the Customs Hall to wait for us.
‘It would have been just as easy for me to have come through with you lot,’ he laughed. But he said that he had been well looked after by the customs staff.
Back at Garden Lodge, Freddie set out on the last three weeks of his life. As in Switzerland, he remained in good spirits, though he took to his bed for long parts of the day. He didn’t once talk about work. Some days he’d get up in the morning and come down in his dressing gown for a cup of tea before returning to his room for the rest of the day. And I’d take him a cup of tea, along with his beloved Delilah for company.
We kept ourselves sane by doing jobs around the house and still pretending that everything was normal. I got round to putting fairy lights in the second magnolia tree by the corner of the house. It made the place look like a fairy grotto, but who cared so long as it made Freddie a little happier.
I waited until Freddie and I were alone in the bedroom before showing him the lights.
‘You haven’t passed any remark about the tree,’ I said.
‘What tree?’ he asked.
‘Come over to the window and I’ll show you,’ I said.
He walked to the window and his face lit up when he saw the tree twinkling away.
‘Oh, you’ve done it,’ he said and hugged me.
Before, he would have responded differently, perhaps snapping sarcastically: ‘Why has it taken you so long?’ But now he no longer had the strength.
I found solace in working in the garden. I lived for the enjoyment he could get from looking at me and the garden from his window. Right up to the very last day I worked on the garden. Even on the Sunday he died, I mowed the lawn.
I abandoned a planned trip to Ireland as time was so clearly running out for Freddie. Joe told me it was in that second week that Freddie came off most of his medication except painkillers. It was a decision he took against the advice of his doctors.
Much of the time Freddie slept or watched television. Joe or Phoebe stayed with him through the day, relieved for short breaks by Mary or Dave Clark. Dave came every day, and we appreciated his help immensely.
Although I was busy working in the garden where he could see me, Freddie needed to hear from me more and more that I loved him. So I got into the habit of flying upstairs and quickly sticking my head around the door.
‘Hey,’ I’d say. ‘I love you!’
Then I’d run back down to get on with the gardening. I knew it made him feel good for a few minutes at least. Sometimes when I got downstairs again I’d look up at his window and he’d be there waiting for me to emerge outside; then he’d blow me a kiss.
I spent the evenings alone with Freddie. We would talk or watch television, or I would doze alongside him. He’d rest his frail head in the cradle of my arm and I’d gently massage his scalp.
Joe, Phoebe and I also started taking turns to stay with Freddie through the night, usually lying awake next to him on constant stand-by. We had an intercom system installed so we could summon one another, and pagers so we could be reached instantly. We wanted to be with him at the end.
In the last ten days before Freddie died, the press set up camp outside Garden Lodge. In the early morning one or two would arrive, followed by more as the day went on. After an hour or so there’d be six or seven dozen.
One of the reporters was a grey-haired man with a big moustache who slipped me a note for Freddie. Letters from the press were given to us daily and this man’s was typical. He said he and his colleagues were dreadfully sorry for causing a nuisance, but if Freddie could come out to have just one photograph taken they could quash the ‘terrible rumours’.
A few days later pushier reporters and photographers began covering both entrances to Garden Lodge. They got up to everything. They’d stand on the walls on the other side of the road to snatch pictures of the house. Their lenses were trained on all the windows. Anyone arriving or leaving the house was instantly interrogated and they ran after visitors down the street. I usually kept my head well down, said nothing and barked at them: ‘I suppose you’ll want to know what colour toilet paper I use next?’ When they asked how Freddie was, I’d say he wasn’t at Garden Lodge but out of the country.
I got my own back one day, too. A favourite place for the press to wait was sitting on the other side of the wall to a sunshed we nicknamed the ‘Number 27 bus shelter’. I got the water pressure machine from the garage and turned it on, training the spray over the roof. There were a number of startled screams from the other side of the wall. I had soaked them.
Terry came in for more than his fair share of flak from the press. They knew he was one of Freddie’s most trusted employees and towards the end he too got his own back.
We were stopped on the way in to Garden Lodge the day the body of rogue newspaper proprietor Robert Maxwell, who owned the Daily Mirror, was found washed up in the Canary Islands.
‘How’s Freddie doing today, then?’ asked the Mirror reporter.
‘Better than Maxwell!’ said Terry.
One night Roger Taylor was pulling out of The Mews late at night and made a sharp left turn into Logan Place. The photographers let off their flashes and, blinded for a moment, he crashed into a police car.
The siege of Garden Lodge posed enormous problems for some of the celebrities who came to pay their last respects. We used a secret entrance in and out of the premises, via the garage adjoined to The Mews, to let them slip in and out. Elton John would warn us by car telephone that he was on his way, and he would slip past the press in a plain old Mini.
Freddie was obviously aware that the press were waiting outside, since you could often hear them from the bedroom. But he never knew to what extent they were there. He thought that at any one time there were no more than a handful and none of us ever corrected him. It wouldn’t have helped anything.
Contrary to some newspaper reports at the time, Freddie’s bedroom never became a ‘mini-hospital’. He had a drip-stand at his right-hand side, in case he needed a blood transfusion, but everything else in the room was exactly as it had always been. In the last few days Freddie stopped eating solid foods; he just ate fruit and drank fruit juices.
At the end of the second week, some pictures arrived which Freddie had bought at auction but sent away for cleaning. They included the portrait of the boy he’d bought on Valentine’s Day. We knew where Freddie wanted them to hang and I was left to light them properly.
The picture of the boy was for the lounge. This Freddie wanted next to the window, and I lit it with a concealed spotlight.
Mary could say some clumsy things, but perhaps she said them without really thinking. One day she suggested to me that we should ask Fred
die to take his wedding ring off, as when her mother had died her fingers had swollen badly.
‘The ring stays on, Mary,’ I said.
Later, when I was alone with Freddie, I mentioned the idea of slipping the ring off in case his finger should swell up, but didn’t say any more.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m keeping it on.’
It never came off; he was even cremated with it on.
On Sunday, 17 November Freddie asked me to give his beard a trim. Whenever he asked me to trim his beard, he would pretend I was still a barber and would make an appointment.
‘Ok,’ I said. ‘I’ll do it for you on Tuesday at 10.30am.’
That Tuesday I went to his room at the allotted hour and Dave Clark was with him. Freddie looked at me and said: ‘Oh, I’m sorry darling, I can’t do it today. Can we do it another day?’
‘Yes, all right,’ I said. ‘We’ll do it tomorrow, same time.’
I returned the next morning and Dave was with him again. But this time Freddie wanted to go ahead with the beard trim.
When I’d finished he said: ‘You know, I haven’t had a bath for a few days.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘We’ll soon fix that.’
Having a real bath would have been too much of an ordeal for him by this stage. So I went downstairs and found Peter. ‘I think it’s time he had a good wash,’ I said. So Phoebe returned with me to Freddie’s room to prepare the bed.
As Freddie’s skin was a little dry it was to be an oil bath. Mary came in while we were in the middle of it. She could see what was going on and decided to make herself scarce. Just as she was leaving she turned around and looked at Freddie, saying: ‘Do you know what? You’ve got the cheekiest, impish look on your face. Aren’t you sorry now you didn’t get them to do this long ago?’
Freddie thoroughly enjoyed the bath and it seemed to perk him up. His face was a picture: an innocent but cheeky childish expression all over it. We left him chatting happily with Dave. By this time Freddie was beginning to spend more time listening and less talking.
One paper claimed he’d asked Dave to ensure that his music never died, but it wasn’t true. He didn’t need to. Freddie was confident his music would stand the test of time. He listened to a lot of music in those last weeks, but none of it his own. More than anything he adored listening over and over to Natalie Cole’s album made up of old love songs. Freddie liked them because they were so familiar to him; they were familiar to me, too. One day he was playing the album and when it got to the track ‘Mona Lisa’ I started singing along.
‘You know this one?’ he asked me.
‘Of course I do,’ I said. ‘I know all the old ones.’
Then he listened to me singing and came up with the funniest of ideas.
‘We should have recorded a song together!’ he said.
The morning of Thursday, 21 November was a very sad day for me. It was the last time Freddie appeared at his bedroom window calling ‘cooee’, and I knew the end was very near.
That night I took special care of him. He dozed and I lay next to him on top of the bed. He only had to elbow me gently and I’d be awake if he wanted anything.
When dawn broke I was already wide awake, quietly watching television. Freddie was still asleep, cuddled inside my arm and holding on to my hand. Every so often he’d softly squeeze it. ‘Do you love me?’ he asked when he woke. More than ever he wanted to hear how much he was treasured. ‘Yes, I love you,’ I whispered and kissed him on the forehead.
At about 6.30 Freddie needed to go to the loo and I walked alongside to steady him. He sat down to have a pee and I leaned against his shoulder to support him. ‘You’re in the way!’ he grumbled, and elbowed me painfully.
‘If I move away from here you’re going to fall over,’ I insisted.
I got him back to bed where he sat quietly for a while. Then he just looked up to me and said: ‘You know, there’s something I’d love to see.’
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘I’d love to go down and see my pictures,’ he said.
He had no control of his muscles by this time, and he couldn’t even place his arms around someone’s neck to support himself to be carried.
‘I’ll carry you,’ I said. ‘It’s not a problem.’
Freddie sat on the bed for another five minutes summoning up his strength, then his brown eyes twinkled and he said: ‘OK, let’s go.’
He was wearing a Mickey Mouse dressing gown and was barefoot. Although I said I would carry him, he was adamant that he would at least try to walk as far as he could. He supported himself on the banister and stumbled down the staircase. I kept slightly ahead of him, putting my arm out to steady him. He kept pushing my arm away. It was a typical act of defiance.
When he got to the bottom of the stairs Freddie looked around the hallway at some prints Peter had rehung there. He sighed gently, looking at them for a few moments.
‘Wow, they look great,’ he said.
Then I led Freddie into the lounge and sat him on a chair. He sat with the newly arrived portrait of the young boy immediately ahead of him in the darkness.
One by one, I slowly flicked on the light over each picture, left to right around the room. Finally I lit up the portrait of the boy. The light fell mostly on the face, then spilled over the boy’s clothes.
‘They’re beautiful,’ said Freddie. But most of all he was mesmerised by the boy. He let out a succession of small, contented sighs. After ten minutes he announced: ‘OK, let’s go.’ I carried him back upstairs and it was a bit of a struggle. As we reached the door he said: ‘You know, I never realised you were so strong.’
‘Yes, you did,’ I said. He knew from our early nightclub days when I’d hurl him around the crowded dance floor. I think he said it as his way of thanking me for looking after him.
When I went back downstairs to switch off the lights I looked around the pictures slowly, soaking them in. I think that Friday morning was the last time I could honestly say Freddie was happy, the last time that Freddie Mercury was still there, the last time he radiated that Freddie Mercury excitement.
The rest of that morning he seemed alert and well aware of what was going on. Jim Beach arrived for a private meeting, and it triggered a flurry of activity to do with Freddie’s statement to the press that he was suffering from Aids. I’ve always been very doubtful that Freddie made that statement of his own accord. He’d kept it all quiet for so long it seemed odd that he’d suddenly want to start confessing things as if he had something to be ashamed of. I’m sure he felt his fate should not become a matter for public debate. It was only a matter for him and his immediate friends. And I’m sure he didn’t want to risk Joe and me being subjected to the publicity. I did not even know that Freddie was going to issue a statement.
I believe Freddie was coerced into making the statement. However, once he had been persuaded I know that Freddie specifically told Jim Beach to release the statement worldwide to prevent the British gutter press from having a scoop to themselves. It was Freddie’s way of saying to those so eagerly awaiting his death: ‘Fuck the lot of you!’
That Friday I slipped out for a relaxing drink at the Gate Club in Notting Hill. When I got home I went straight up to Freddie’s room. He was asleep and Peter was dozing next to him on top of the bed covers.
He dozed through much of the next day, and in the evening I went up to see him. We were lying together on the bed when he asked me what time it was.
‘It’s eight o’clock,’ I said.
‘Soon the whole world will know,’ he sighed, looking at me with sad, brown eyes. This was the first indication I had that something was going on.
When Freddie nodded off I went downstairs and mentioned what he’d said to Joe and Peter. They confirmed that a statement explaining his condition had been prepared. It was due to be released at midnight.
I wasn’t supposed to be keeping watch over Freddie through Saturday night – Joe was. But he’d gone out to the gym, t
hen out for a drink, and didn’t reappear. I was with Freddie in his room at around ten when he got terribly agitated. He kept asking me where Joe had got to.
‘Why, what’s the problem?’ I asked.
‘Well, I have to take my medicine,’ he said.
‘Oh, that’s not a problem,’ I answered. ‘I can give you the pills you want. Which ones are they?’ He knew exactly which three or four pills he needed – the painkillers. He had been taking AZT, but had abandoned the treatment along with the rest.
Freddie and I chatted away all night. I don’t remember what we wittered to each other about, even when Freddie was well. It was all happy, inconsequential stuff. We didn’t watch television any more. We just lay on the bed cuddling until he dozed off. And sometimes so did I.
Occasionally he gave me a quick jab to the ribs to stop me snoring, or a harder one if he needed something. Then he asked me to prepare some fruit for him in the kitchen. I sliced some mango and added a little sorbet to help fight his chronic dehydration.
We drifted asleep again. When Freddie next woke me it was about three and he seemed incapable of explaining himself. He couldn’t talk properly and kept pointing to his mouth, frowning. Something was terribly wrong. I tried to work out what he wanted, but couldn’t.
About half an hour later Joe came back home and saw I was having problems. As soon as Freddie spotted Joe, he pointed to his mouth.
‘What is it, Freddie?’ Joe asked. ‘What do you want?’
I told him this had been going on for half an hour, ever since I had prepared some fruit for Freddie which he’d then eaten before dozing off.
Joe leaned over Freddie and opened his mouth. A piece of mango had lodged at the back of his throat which he could neither swallow nor bring back up. Joe prised Freddie’s jaw open wide and flicked out the offending piece of fruit with his finger. Freddie didn’t say anything. Joe and I were fully aware that a healthy Freddie would have been furious with me for not understanding. He sipped some juice, then went back to sleep.
