Freddie Mercury (41 page)

Having taken his decision, I have to stress that in no way had he ever considered suicide. That was something that other people might have done. Instead of seeing suicide as the ultimate choice, Freddie would have seen it as a loss of control. In his ideal world, he would have gone to a clinic to be put down, with an injection like his beloved Tiffany.

I find any description of both my own feelings and the atmosphere in the house during these last two weeks of Freddie’s life very difficult to express and however I contrive to relate them will not do the reality full justice. The situation brought about contradictory feelings. Not only did we not know how long Freddie’s dying would take but we also, perhaps selfishly, didn’t know for how much longer we ourselves could keep up the brave smiling faces.

But Freddie was determined that life was to continue as normal. Every day we went shopping. Every day, Joe went to the gym. Every day, Jim worked in the garden. Every day the cleaners came in but they never went anywhere near Freddie’s bedroom.

It was as though the house was encased beneath a huge, invisible glass bell jar, like the ones that covered the works of Victorian clocks.
I heard clocks everywhere in the house, ticking away, ticking away, each minute being part of a countdown whose length we didn’t know. Each tick counting away the moments of Freddie’s life. Everything outside the glass jar carried on as normal but we inside, it seemed, had always to be active, always straightening a book, replacing an ashtray, plumping a cushion, anything which might indicate that Freddie was expected to come downstairs again momentarily and he would see that his house was still perfect, just as he wanted it.

I couldn’t tell you from one day to the next what the weather was. I just went out into it whether it be cloudy, sunny, freezing cold… Nothing really mattered. It must have been on the Tuesday night before he died that I had my talk with him. The doctors had told each of us that we had to enable him to let go, that in order to make it easier for people to die, they had to be told that it was okay by those they were about to leave behind.

I was lying on the bed with Freddie and he was asking how things were in the house, if things were straight and tidy. “I feel so tired, wondering whether I will ever see any of it again. Trying to visualise what’s going on. I’m so isolated up here. All of a sudden it feels a huge house.”

I sensed this was the only chance I would have to carry out the doctor’s advice. “Everything’s fine,” I said. “Just as you’d like it, like always. And we’re fine too. We’re coping. Don’t worry about us. If you feel it’s time to go, we’re behind you all the way. Don’t worry about us. Don’t feel you’re leaving us. Everything’s fine.”

We just sat quietly, silently for an hour or two and then he dozed.

This, the final week of Freddie’s life saw several sets of visitors. His family, Bomi and Jer, his parents and his sister Kash with her husband Roger and their two children, arrived early in that week for afternoon tea. While directing events from the bed, with superhuman effort he was able to entertain them for some two or three hours. This was still Freddie protecting them, making them believe that there was nothing for them to worry about. We brought up the tea which included home-made sandwiches and shop-bought cakes. Little did any of us know that this would be the last time that they would see Freddie alive. Although they wanted to return later in the week, Freddie categorically denied himself and them another meeting. He didn’t want to put them through further suffering by them seeing him as bad as he was. Was there anything more for him to say to them?

Elton John arrived one day and stayed for about forty minutes and this time he arrived in his Bentley and pulled up at the front door. So often in the past, he’d kept his visits secret by driving in his Mini and parking in the Mews. His reply to the press’s questions was that, “I’ve come to see my friend.”

He was due to leave for work engagements in Paris. Before he left, he gave me a series of telephone numbers where he could be contacted.

Brian and Anita came and on another occasion Roger and Debbie. Both visits were fairly short. Without them knowing it, Freddie was saying goodbye. Dave Clark was fairly frequently at the house. Freddie took comfort at his being there, realising that this gave us some respite from the continual care and observation.

Dr. Atkinson made his usual regular calls throughout the week, every other day, to monitor the deterioration in Freddie’s health. At this point, we were led to believe that Freddie still had maybe two to three weeks left. Terry Giddings still came most days even though there was no possibility now of Freddie ever going anywhere… Terry was very concerned.

Even though she was seven months pregnant and had little Richard at home, Mary still tried to get to the house daily for a short visit in order to continue her work. Freddie had determined that business was still to be as usual.

Which brings us to Friday, November 22, 1991.

On Thursday, the day before, Freddie asked that we get Jim Beach on the telephone and then informed us that he had arranged for Jim to come over and see him. We realised it must be for something quite serious because of Freddie’s general health. Jim had kept in touch with Gordon Atkinson as much as he had with us or Freddie at the house, so that he was always abreast with the reality of the situation. Jim thus arrived at about ten o’clock in the morning and went straight up to Freddie’s bedroom. At one point, Joe went up and provided them with what appeared to be much needed refreshments.

At about three-thirty, after a long meeting of five-and-a-half hours, which showed that Freddie was still entirely capable of rational thought, Jim Beach came downstairs and informed us of the basic content of the previous hours’ discussions. Freddie and he had decided that it was time to release a statement with regards to Freddie’s Aids status. Obviously, this came as a great shock to us as we
waited in the kitchen. Jim Beach explained the reasons behind this announcement and gave us the chance to put our point of view. None of us knew exactly how to react at that point. After all the years of having to keep this huge secret to ourselves, it was now going to be broadcast to the world. After discussion, we accepted the reasons behind it. A lot of good could come out of Freddie admitting to having the disease while still alive. His circumstances and celebrity could be used as a basis for the benefit of other sufferers and those affected by the disease. It would show that anyone was at risk.

It was explained to us that the full effect would be much diluted should his health status be revealed after his death.

You have to realise that I had been consistently lying to my closest friends for these past years. For the full information to be now released as an official press statement made a public liar of me.

Freddie had thought about releasing a statement at various times during recent years but was always held back by his feelings and concern towards us and his family, the people closest to him. He wanted to protect us as much as himself from the glare and scrutiny that going public would have created. He didn’t want anybody to have to walk down the street with people pointing at them and talking behind their backs. Also, due to the recent revelations to him from both Joe Fanelli and Jim Hutton about their own health, he did not want Garden Lodge to be branded a House of Death and life for all the residents within made intolerable.

Roxy Meade, the Queen press officer, was instructed to release the statement on Friday evening. Jim Beach had hoped to avoid the tabloid press capitalising on the news because these newspapers had devoted so much space in the previous months, printing and speculating on rumours of Freddie’s ill-health. Jim had hoped the Sunday broadsheets would carry the news more responsibly.

After checking the prognosis for Freddie with Doctor Atkinson, Jim Beach left on a previously arranged trip to Los Angeles to deal with band business.

Since the previous Monday, Joe, Jim and I had been operating on a rota we had worked out so that Freddie had someone with him twenty-four hours a day. This included one of us being with him all night. Freddie would be in the bed and the one on duty would be on top of the bed at his side. We actually did very little but at least we were there to hold his hand when he woke. He would lie awake often
for an hour or more but not need conversation. The physical presence of another human being was enough. Should we be asleep when he awoke, he would never wake us.

It had been my turn on duty on the Friday night, following the press announcement and that’s when Freddie explained to me his reasoning behind the timing of the announcement. He had a fairly peaceful night as though a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. In the morning, I left his bedroom when Joe got up so that I could have a short nap before Saturday’s merry-go-round. Jim went and bought all the papers and there was Freddie splashed across the front pages. We turned the television on downstairs and there he was too. We took some of the papers up to him but they were left unread on the bed. Freddie appeared withdrawn, as though he knew what was about to happen. The press’s speculation over and embellishments upon his statement no longer concerned him.

I actually saw very little of Freddie on Saturday due to my having been with him all the previous night. I went to bed at my usual time and it was Jim’s turn on the rota. At half-past-five in the morning on Sunday, the phone extension by my bed rang. I could tell it was an internal call by the ringing sound.

This particular dawn call was from Joe. He sounded very anxious and asked me to come straight over to Freddie’s room. I didn’t have the courage to ask if he was dead. I just put the phone down and threw some clothes on.

When I got to Freddie’s room, I found Freddie had slipped into a coma. He had had an attack of rigors. He was lying very stiffly, his head at an awkward angle and his eyes were staring into the corner of the room behind him. There were no signs that he was aware of our presence, even though we tried talking to him and gently shaking him.

We were confused. While we’d been preparing ourselves for anything out of the ordinary, we were not actually at all prepared for this turn of events. We called Dr Atkinson who told us he would be with us as soon as he could. I called Mary and let her know what had happened. She came over to the house later in the morning, at about ten-thirty, and we left her to spend a short time with Freddie before having to return to her little son Richard.

Dr. Atkinson arrived and, after we’d unburdened all our fears, he tried his best to calm us down and explained to us that Freddie could
carry on in this state for a further few days. He spent quite a lot of time assuring us that Freddie wasn’t like this due to anything we had or hadn’t done and that there was nothing more medically that we could do for him. All that was left was for us to be there with him.

Freddie’s family also called. One thing which still plays on my conscience, even now, is that I couldn’t let them come to see him that afternoon. I explained to them that Freddie was not having a good day but maybe early in the following week he would feel better. I didn’t know then that I would be calling them four hours later to say that Freddie had passed away.

Dave Clark was called and immediately made his way over to the house and by the end of the afternoon, we had also been joined by Terry Giddings. In the house by then were Freddie and Dave Clark upstairs, Jim, Joe, Terry, Gordon Atkinson and myself downstairs in the kitchen. At about a quarter-to-seven, Dr. Atkinson said that there was nothing more he could do for the moment and so would go and have dinner and return afterwards. As Joe escorted Dr. Atkinson through the garden and thence out into the Mews, Dave Clark came downstairs and asked Jim and I to go upstairs to help Freddie to the lavatory.

We were pleased and surprised that Freddie had been able to ask to help to be relieved. While Freddie was clinically bed-bound, he was proud to the end that as far as he was concerned he wasn’t. In that final week we would manoeuvre him to the edge of the bed and then supporting him with our arms like a human zimmer-frame, we would get him to the lavatory and back. Therefore, to his own satisfaction, he was
not
bed-bound!

When we got to his bedside and started to move him, we found that nature had taken its course. In the process of making him comfortable again, both Jim and I noticed that he wasn’t breathing.

It was about a quarter-to-seven.

My first reaction was to try and get Doctor Atkinson back who had only just left. From the house, I called over to Joe in the Mews on the phone as Gordon Atkinson was already driving away in his car. Although Joe’s running out into Logan Mews alerted the press to something going on, Joe managed to stop Gordon and brought him back inside. Gordon immediately came up to Freddie’s bedroom where he pronounced Freddie dead and certified the time as being twelve minutes to seven.

F
rom that moment it seemed to fall to me to be in charge of the situation. It was as though a bomb had dropped and everyone was in a daze. Even as I looked round, everything appeared as though we were in a fog and I was the only one able to move.

A frantic round of telephoning began. The first and most important call was to Mary. The second call was to Freddie’s mother and father. It was so difficult informing his parents of what had happened. I had earlier put them off visiting once more. It was after those two calls that I had to try and trace Jim Beach at one of his many meetings in Los Angeles. Jim’s role as manager had now been superseded by that of Freddie’s executor, along with John Libson whose home phone number we had never been given. Even though it was Sunday, Queen business didn’t stop. In the conversations I had with Jim Beach over the next hour when I’d finally got hold of him, it became obvious that timing was of paramount importance.

Timing and the manipulation of events seems to have been an integral element in this whole story and now it was decided that it couldn’t be seen that Freddie’s body was being sneaked out of the house. Doing so might appear that we were trying to cover up the fact of his death. A statement had therefore to be released to the press before the departure of Freddie’s body could be carried out with the likelihood of any dignity at all. That’s why the press announcement was released at midnight, giving me time to make the necessary arrangements.