Mercury and Me

by Jim Hutton

  I went downstairs for a coffee, followed closely by Joe. He was about to apologise for not having turned up for night duty, but I wouldn’t let him speak.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said. I guess I knew where Joe had got to. It was a very heavy strain to bear; he’d found it all too much that day and had had to get away from Garden Lodge to forget about Freddie for a while.

  Joe went upstairs to Freddie’s room and lay next to him on the bed. A few minutes later I went back, told Joe to get some sleep and took his place next to Freddie, who was fast asleep.

  Freddie woke up again at six in the morning and uttered what were to be his last two words: ‘Pee, pee!’ He wanted to be helped to the loo. He looked terribly weak and I had to carry him. As I lowered him back on to the bed I heard a deafening crack. It sounded like one of Freddie’s bones breaking, cracking like the branch of a tree. He screamed out in pain and went into a convulsion.

  I yelled for Joe. I needed him to pin Freddie to the bed to stop him injuring himself. Over the years Joe had seen Freddie have one anxiety attack after another and he knew just how to handle him – by pinning him down until the anxiety had passed. He said: ‘Freddie, calm down. Freddie, calm down.’ Then Freddie’s hand shot up and went straight for Joe’s throat. He was like a drowning man clutching for air.

  Joe freed himself from Freddie’s grip and eventually he calmed him down. Then, exhausted by the strain, Freddie promptly fell asleep. We phoned his GP, Dr Gordon Atkinson, and he came over and gave Freddie an injection of morphine to help him through the day. Joe later told me Freddie was allergic to morphine, but it was now so late in the day it didn’t seem to matter.

  Mary came by later in the morning and we all stood around in the kitchen, waiting to hear Dr Atkinson’s prognosis. He said: ‘Freddie will probably last until Thursday.’

  Joe and I looked at each other. We both knew that there was no way Freddie could last that long.

  Mary left shortly after that. The rest of that day Freddie nodded in and out of sleep. Elton John came to visit him one last time, driving himself in his green Bentley. He parked right outside the gate, blocking Logan Road completely. His attitude to the press was ‘Stuff you lot. I want to see my friend and I don’t care about any of you.’ He didn’t stay very long.

  I felt the need to get well away from Garden Lodge, so that afternoon I took myself off in the Volvo to Holland Park where I moped around for an hour.

  By the time I got back, Freddie was as ill as I’d ever seen him. He seemed to know what was going on around him, but couldn’t respond to any of it; he could hear, but couldn’t move his eyes to acknowledge he’d heard. He just stared straight ahead, eyes glazed.

  Dr Atkinson stayed at the house all afternoon and left just after 6.30. I thanked him for having stayed so long, saw him out, and then went straight back to be with Freddie.

  All that day Delilah had been in the bedroom, but not once had she sat on the bed; she remained crouched at the foot. Dave Clark was sitting by the bed, massaging Freddie’s hand. I picked Delilah up and placed her next to Freddie. Dave then took Freddie’s hand and started stroking Delilah’s coat with it.

  ‘It’s Delilah,’ he told Freddie. He seemed to recognise what he was being told.

  Freddie made clear he wanted to go to the loo. After the terrible convulsions which had followed his morning visit to the bathroom, I wasn’t bold enough to try to cope with him again single-handed. I flew downstairs and found Phoebe.

  By the time we got back upstairs, Freddie had wet the bed. Dave Clark didn’t seem to have noticed.

  Peter looked over at me and asked: ‘Shall we change the bedclothes?’

  ‘We’d better,’ I answered. ‘If we don’t and he wakes up he’ll go absolutely ape-shit.’

  I don’t know why I said that; perhaps it was my subconscious trying to make out that things were less serious than they were.

  Peter started changing the bed while I took care of Freddie. As I was about to change Freddie into a clean T-shirt and pair of boxer shorts, I asked Dave to leave the room for a few moments.

  It was when I was getting his shorts on that I felt him try to raise his left leg to help a little. It was the last thing he did. I looked down at him, knowing he was dead.

  ‘Phoebe,’ I cried out. ‘I’m sorry, he’s gone.’

  I slipped my arm under Freddie’s neck, kissed him and then held him. His eyes were still open. I can remember very clearly the expression on his face – and when I go to sleep every night it’s still there in front of me. He looked radiant. One minute he was a boy with a gaunt, sad little face and the next he was a picture of ecstasy. Freddie’s whole face went back to everything it had been before. He looked finally and totally at peace. Seeing him like that made me feel happy in my sadness. I felt an overwhelming sense of relief. I knew that he was no longer in pain.

  Dave Clark had only got as far as the doorway when Freddie died. He came back in to stay with me, and Phoebe ran to find Joe.

  I stopped the tiny fly-wheel of the wind-up carriage clock by the bed. I’d given it to Freddie because he told me he’d always wanted one. It read twelve minutes to seven. I’ve never started it again.

  11

  NO ESCAPE FROM REALITY

  A few minutes after Freddie died on that November night in 1991, Joe ran into the room looking for a mirror to see if there was any sign of breathing.

  ‘Look,’ I said softly. ‘He’s gone.’

  Joe ran out into The Mews, screaming: ‘Where’s the doctor?’ He was almost in tears.

  We crossed Freddie’s arms and put a little teddy in his hands. It had been sent by a well-wisher and seemed appropriate.

  Mary was the first to be phoned, then the doctor was reached in his car and started to make his way back. Mary telephoned Freddie’s parents and sister and broke the news to them.

  A lot of things that went on in the hours immediately following Freddie’s death are no more than a blur to me. I didn’t know what planet I was on.

  I went downstairs to switch off the lights in the garden for a few seconds, then slipped off to my room to ring my mother in Ireland. As soon as she answered, I began crying uncontrollably. She couldn’t make out a word I was saying. I asked her: ‘Could you phone the bishop and ask him to say a mass for Freddie?’

  She said: ‘Calm down, son.’ I took a few moments to compose myself. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Freddie died,’ I said. There was nothing she could say to console me, but she tried. She asked me to tell her exactly how it had happened and I did. I needed to tell someone who would understand. When I rang off I stayed in my room for a while, trying to hold back the tears.

  When I rejoined the others, Phoebe was trying to contact Jim Beach by telephone. He had flown to Los Angeles after seeing Freddie on Friday. Then Dr Atkinson returned.

  I went back into Freddie’s room and stood looking at him. When the two of us were left alone for a moment, I said a little prayer. Then I looked at him and said aloud: ‘You bastard! Well, at least you’re free now. The press can’t hurt you any more.’

  About half an hour after Freddie died, Mary came to pay her last respects. She stayed for ten minutes. When Joe and Phoebe came into the room, the four of us had a big hug. This was our hour of need and we all turned to Phoebe. He’d lost his mother recently and he seemed to know how to cope. Only Joe, Phoebe and I knew just how exhausting it had been nursing Freddie for nights on end, watching helplessly as his health deteriorated dramatically, witnessing the ravages of his cruel and unremitting illness.

  Later that evening Freddie’s parents arrived and went to his bedside. Freddie looked so serene, ecstatic and radiant that they asked whether we had put make-up on his face. We said we hadn’t.

  All of us at Garden Lodge knew what arrangements Freddie would have wanted when he died. We didn’t need instruction on this from him; we just knew. His body was to be taken out of the house as quickly as possible. Phoebe�
�s father was a retired undertaker and everything was handled by his former company. Usually undertakers take away the body in a bag, placed in a tin box. We all agreed that this was not good enough for Freddie. We insisted he had to leave in a proper oak coffin.

  We’d planned that Freddie’s body would leave Garden Lodge at the stroke of midnight. His body was to be driven to a secret location – in fact a chapel of rest in Ladbroke Grove, west London. But Phoebe had such difficulty raising Jim Beach in America that it held up Freddie’s departure. Actually, when he did reach him, around midnight, Jim Beach asked whether the body could be kept at Garden Lodge until the next day, giving him time to fly home to accompany it as it left the house. Phoebe and I vetoed the idea.

  News of Freddie’s death reached the press twenty minutes before his body left Garden Lodge at 12.20am. But the body was taken out in an anonymous van and the police did a brilliant job preventing photographers and reporters from following it.

  It was pandemonium outside Garden Lodge the following day. Freddie’s death made headlines around the globe and the press were frantic to know exactly when he’d died and what he looked like. When the phone rang in the house, I just didn’t want to know; I left it to Phoebe or Joe to deal with.

  Flowers started arriving from Freddie’s fans all over the world and Joe, Phoebe, Terry and myself took turns to bring in the constant stream of bouquets and wreaths from the gate. Eventually the Queen office enlisted some security lads to help us.

  The more the flowers kept coming, the more I felt myself cracking up without Freddie around. In the end I ran around the house and collected every single music video of Freddie I could find. Then I sat down, surrounded by the cats, and watched them over and over again, bawling my head off. It helped a great deal, and over the next fortnight I would watch them for hours on end. I’d sob my heart out on the sofa, cuddling the cats for comfort. And if I went out, on my Walkman or car cassette player I’d listen to the Mr Bad Guy album that Freddie had given me in the first year we were together.

  In the title track, ‘Mr Bad Guy’, one line made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end each time it came round: ‘Yes, I’m everybody’s Mr Bad Guy – can’t you see, I’m Mr Mercury, spread your wings and fly away with me.’ To me, Freddie was always one of the good guys. When I heard the song I was cheered that we had flown off together until our wings were cruelly clipped.

  The three of us at Garden Lodge dealt with Freddie’s death in our own ways. Phoebe stayed in the kitchen, watching endless television. Joe channelled his grief into work-outs at the gym, but he had taken it terribly badly and almost went to pieces. When he came back from the gym that first day, he couldn’t handle me playing Freddie’s videos and stormed into the kitchen. He asked Phoebe at the top of his voice: ‘Why’s he playing all Freddie’s music?’

  Joe went off to his room and came to realise that I was simply doing my own thing, finding my equivalent of going to a gym. He cooled down, and in the harrowing nights which followed he became a real soulmate.

  On that Monday night, just one day after Freddie’s death, I went out alone to drown my sorrows. I walked to the Gate Club in Notting Hill intending to get totally legless. As I walked through the door Bobby, one of the bar staff, said: ‘Jim, you look very depressed.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘My boyfriend just died.’ I mentioned that my partner was Freddie, but I don’t think anyone believed me. At the end of the night, drunk and emotionally drained, I walked slowly back to Garden Lodge. I found a friend in a total stranger, a lone fan outside Garden Lodge gate, beside himself with grief and crying his head off.

  I tried to comfort him and we talked for a long time about how wonderful Freddie was. I hung on his every word of praise for Freddie and I guess he thought I was just another fan driven to pilgrimage. In a way he was right.

  When a black cab pulled up in Logan Place, a dark figure got out; it was a woman who was as drunk as a skunk. She tottered past us and as she did she slurred something in our direction, but we had no idea what she had said. Five minutes later the same black figure approached us again. She had made us each a mug of piping hot cocoa. It was an unexpected and kind gesture on such a chilly night.

  As we sipped the warming drinks, the woman said most coherently: ‘You know, I’ve lived here a long time but I’ve never actually seen Freddie Mercury – though I’ve always been aware he was here.’

  We talked for a while longer and then I said: ‘Well, I’m sorry. I’ve got to go to bed now.’ I got up and stuck my key in the lock.

  ‘What is this?’ she asked. ‘Is this some kind of trick?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said.

  ‘How come you’re opening the gate?’ she asked.

  ‘I live here,’ I said.

  The poor fan just didn’t know what to do. I invited the two of them into the garden to see the vast patchwork of colourful floral tributes covering the lawn. We talked for a little longer before they left and I went to bed.

  On Tuesday morning flowers began arriving again at dawn, and again we ran shifts on the gate to ferry them inside the grounds. We didn’t leave one stem outside on the pavement; every flower came in and every flower went on the five hearses for the funeral the following day. We weren’t sure what we could do with all the flowers after the funeral service, but in the end Phoebe came up with the answer: they were shipped to every Aids hospice, hospital and old people’s home in the area.

  Flowers were so important to Freddie that I wanted to send something appropriate. Reminded of his beloved swans on the lake in Montreux, I sent him a swan in white flowers. The message on the card I chose was a few lines from a remembrance card for my father when he had died almost a decade earlier:

  Others were taken, yes I know

  But you were mine, I loved you so.

  A prayer, a tear till the end of time,

  For a loving friend I was proud to call mine.

  To a beautiful life, a sad, sad end,

  You died as you lived, everyone’s friend.

  The morning of Freddie’s cremation, Wednesday, 27 November 1991, was grey and overcast. I woke up in a dreadful state. As I got dressed I realised that I was going down with another heavy bout of flu. It wasn’t a good start to a terrible day.

  The funeral service was at two in the afternoon at the North London Crematorium. But even on that day of all days, our last private moments were taken from us. At Jim Beach’s invitation, paparazzi photographer Richard Young was at Garden Lodge to take intimate pictures both before and after the service.

  One lovely gesture, carried out to the letter, was suggested by Joe, who said we should each wear the Butler and Wilson’s jewellery Freddie had given us for Christmas 1989. ‘He would have liked that,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit of glit, isn’t it?’ We all agreed.

  Until then I’d never worn the massive cut-glass and silver tie-pin Freddie had given me. All around the world they talk of wearing your ribbon with pride; well, that day I wore my tie-pin with pride.

  It had been agreed some time before that it would be appropriate for Mary and me to travel together in the first car in the funeral procession. As we prepared to leave Garden Lodge for the service, for the first time Mary metaphorically slapped me in the face. She said she didn’t want me in the first car – she wanted Dave Clark. I was very hurt.

  When we left the house Mary and Dave took the first car, Jim Beach went in the second, while Joe, Phoebe and I shared the third. The three of us felt let down. We’d been the ones with Freddie through thick and thin during his illness, and it seemed that no sooner was he dead than we were being pushed aside.

  In the small chapel of rest, Freddie’s family sat on the right with the rest of us on the left. I was a little heartened to see Mary sitting in the front row waiting for the three of us to sit with her. Dave Clark must have realised the cruel way Mary had spurned me on this of all days and he slipped into one of the pews behind us. We spoke to Freddie’s parents before joining M
ary. We all found the service difficult, and I made a point of holding Mary’s hand from beginning to end of the service.

  Freddie’s faith was one of the world’s oldest: Zoroastrianism. The service was therefore an unusual one, conducted by priests in white robes chanting traditional prayers that I didn’t understand. So I said my own prayers and mentally held my own service for Freddie. When he was alive we had never spoken about our beliefs; I’m sure he guessed I was a Catholic. But while he was alive, as long as we had each other nothing else seemed to matter.

  Brian, Roger and John were there, and so was Elton John. Afterwards Brian and I shook hands and he said how nice it was to see me and how very sorry he was about Freddie’s death. Roger said the same, and rather than shake hands we hugged. I was very pleased to see John at the funeral and told him so and thanked him. He’d kept his distance as Freddie was fading away, but came to pay his last respects. We shook hands and had a little cuddle. The only other conversation I can remember from that day was with the black cemetery moggie.

  The service was followed by a small reception at Garden Lodge, which was still being besieged by the press. Jim Beach thought it right to let people come back to the house after the service if they wanted to. Brian, Roger and John went straight out for a quiet lunch together instead. Elton didn’t come back, but Freddie’s doctors did.

  This may seem glum, but I’d rather hoped that at Garden Lodge we’d talk quietly about how the service had gone and generally remember Freddie with a little reverence and dignity. Instead it was party time. Horrendous, shrill laughter came from the kitchen and it tore me apart.

  As the first champagne cork popped that afternoon I found myself drifting away from the others. I felt disgusted at what I thought of as disrespect for Freddie that day. I’m sure Freddie would have loved a massive champagne party thrown to send him on his way, but that wasn’t what it seemed. Perhaps if we’d all gone off somewhere for lunch, like the band, it might have been easier to have a celebratory farewell for Freddie. But it didn’t happen; instead we gave him a surreal send-off.