Freddie Mercury (1946-1991) by Jim Hutton
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. 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. 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.
