Читать книгу Somebody to Love - Matt Richards - Страница 22

In the early 1970s, Freddie and Queen were beginning to establish a reputation on the live scene and had gained a reasonable following. During this period Freddie was renting a flat with Mary Austin. Though to all their friends and colleagues – even Mary herself – theirs appeared a normal heterosexual relationship, when she accompanied Freddie to Queen gigs in those early years, Mary would have to witness him being mobbed by girls once he left the stage.

‘Freddie was just so good on that stage, like I had never seen him before, as if it was something he’d stored up,’ she recalls. ‘For the first time I felt, “Here is a star in the making. He’s on his way. I don’t think he needs me anymore.” I didn’t feel tearful or upset. I was happy that it was at last happening for him because of his talent. When he came off the stage all the girls and his friends were crowding around him. He was so busy. I started to walk away and he came running after me. He said, “Where are you going?” I told him I was going home. But he wouldn’t let me go. That night, I realised that I had to go along with this and be part of it. As everything took off, I was watching him flower. It was wonderful to observe. There was something about seeing that happen that was exciting. I was so happy that he wanted to be with me.’¹

Within a couple of years of meeting and moving in together, Freddie and Mary had moved out of their bedsit in Victoria Road and found themselves a larger, self-contained flat in Holland Road, which cost them £19 a week in rent. By now, Freddie’s determination and dedication were beginning to pay off: Queen had signed a record deal and had had their first hit single. As far as Mary was concerned, everything was going well: ‘I felt very safe with him. The more I got to know him, the more I loved him for himself. He had quality as a person, which I think is rare in life these days. One thing, which was always constant, was the love. We knew we could trust each other and we were safe with each other. We knew that we would never hurt each other on purpose.’²

But it wasn’t long before Freddie was secretly cheating on Mary. He had met David Minns, a 25-year-old openly gay record executive at Elektra Records. One evening the two of them were drinking together at a club on the King’s Road when Freddie shocked Minns with a display of public affection: ‘Freddie grabbed me and kissed me, and I was so shocked because I don’t kiss people I don’t know. Not in those days, anyway. And I thought that was a very odd thing to do because I had no idea that he may have been gay, or was. Let’s get this straight; he pursued me. Freddie was incredibly obsessive about people: he just wouldn’t leave you alone. He was very sweet, you know, just a very nice guy and I thought why not?’³

Freddie and David began an affair during which Freddie consistently told Minns that he and Mary were simply just friends, but he was soon to be found out: ‘Freddie had told me he shared a flat with Mary and that it wasn’t a relationship. One night we went back with Mary to Holland Road. Suddenly it occurred to me there’s one bedroom. I started to put two and two together that there was a little more to the Mary and Freddie relationship than he had been able to tell me. He was cheating on her.’⁴

Others around Freddie found the nature of his relationship with Mary strange. Tony Brainsby, Mercury’s first publicist, says, ‘When I first started working with Freddie, Mary was already with him. They seemed very close, but I always found it so odd because he was so gay.’⁵ And Freddie’s friend, Peter Straker, disapproved of Freddie’s affair: ‘Mary was his girlfriend, as such. I knew he was carrying on with David and I took no part in any of that because I didn’t want to be involved. It was a very difficult situation and I didn’t like it because he should have told her.’⁶

As Freddie’s career took off, the distance grew between him and Mary. He started coming home late, if at all, and she became suspicious that he was having an affair but naturally, given their circumstances, assumed it was with another woman. ‘Even if I didn’t want to fully admit it, I had realised that something was going on,’ she says. ‘Although I didn’t know what it was I decided to discuss it with Freddie. I told him, “Something is going on and I just feel like a noose around your neck. I think it’s time for me to go.” But he insisted nothing was wrong.’⁷

Freddie apparently needed the stability that Mary was providing for him. Even in his later life, as Lesley-Ann Jones suggests, Mary had become the ‘matriarch of Freddie’s “family”, a largely gay entourage of employees who doubled as friends.’⁸ Freddie was desperately unsure what effect admitting his homosexuality to Mary might have on their relationship. He began avoiding Mary, ensuring he was out when she was home and vice versa, and he withdrew from any form of confrontation.

‘I felt something was going on and things cooled. The writing was on the wall. We just weren’t as close as we had been,’ she reflects.⁹ The manner of their relationship couldn’t go on much longer and then, one day, in the kitchen, Freddie said he had a confession to make. It was a revelation that would change their relationship forever. ‘He said, “I think I’m bisexual.” I told him, “I think you’re gay.” And nothing else was said. We just hugged. I thought he’s been very brave. It had taken me a while to realise, being a bit naive.’¹⁰

The news signalled the end of their relationship, but not the end of their friendship. If anything, it grew even stronger. Mary moved out of the flat and found herself a small property nearby, as Freddie wanted her to remain close to him: ‘I could see Freddie’s own flat from my bathroom,’ she recalls.¹¹ Eventually, Freddie’s music publishing company purchased the property for her and they would continue to see each other frequently.

Reflecting on their relationship, Mary reveals the relief she felt when Freddie finally told her he was bisexual: ‘It was a relief really, to actually hear it from him, to have surmised that that was really the problem of the last two years of the six years that we were together, to know that I had more or less guessed right. So it was a great relief for me. I felt a huge burden had been lifted so I enjoyed the fact that he was able to be honest and frank. But certainly, once that had been discussed, he was a different person again. He was like the person I had known in the early years. He was more at one with himself, more relaxed, more happy and I don’t think he ever thought that I’d be supportive of him becoming a gay, but I was because it was a part of himself and it was nice to see Freddie at one with himself. It was more than nice; it was wonderful. He was such a happy person; you couldn’t deny Freddie the right to be at one with himself.’¹²

The journalist David Wigg interviewed Freddie a number of times and witnessed first-hand the nature of the friendship between Freddie and Mary: ‘It was an extraordinary relationship, which became like brother and sister but they had started off as lovers. The only person that he felt comfortable with, well and truly comfortable with, was Mary, who was, I think, the truest love of his life.’¹³

When Freddie would reflect on his relationship with Mary, he could only echo Wigg’s sentiments: ‘We were closer than anybody else, though we stopped living together after about seven years. Our love affair ended in tears, but a deep bond grew out of it, and that’s something nobody can take away from us. It’s unreachable. People always ask me about sexuality and all those things, right from the early days, but I couldn’t fall in love with a man the same way as I have with Mary.’¹⁴