Mercury: An Intimate Biography of Freddie Mercury (8 page)

For the eight-year-old Freddie, the journey from home to his new school was an arduous one. “He went by ship with his father before taking the train up to Poona [now Pune],” recalls Freddie’s cousin Perviz.

“It was a very long and tiring journey. There were regular ships from Zanzibar to Bombay”—already the busiest, most industrialized and most progressive city in India—“and we went often because we had relatives there. Freddie would go to my auntie Jer, Bomi’s sister, during school holidays. She was a very good, kind lady who also used to take care of the small children of another of my father’s brothers in India.”

A typical British Raj hill station in Western India, 184 miles from what was then Bombay, Panchgani (“Five Hills”) is renowned for its quaint old bungalows, public buildings, ancient Parsee dwellings, and lush strawberry fields. The tranquil colonial town was founded during the Raj as a sanatorium and rest resort. It is not hard to see why. Looking out across coastal plains, dense forest and the River Krishna, its high-altitude, iron-rich waters and dense, volcanic red soil make it a popular haven with tourists. Many make the four- or five-hour drive from Mumbai for “Monsoon getaways.” Here, they walk, ride, and unwind away from the dust and heat of the Indian plains. Some also send their children here, to its English-style boarding schools.

St. Peter’s School stands to this day. Founded in 1904, it continues to uphold traditional Indian values and culture, and to promote tolerance of faiths as diverse as Catholicism and Zoroastrianism. The school’s motto is “
Ut Prosim
” (“That I may profit”). Its crest, “a symbol of hope and rebirth,” features a phoenix rising from flames, the olive branch of peace held in its beak. Freddie’s headmaster, Mr. Oswal D. Bason, arrived in 1947, the year India was granted independence. He remained principal until 1974, just as Queen were tasting the
amuse-bouche
of fame. While the school does not flaunt its rock ’n’ roll connections, it is rarely reluctant to open its doors to the curious. Staff there have even assisted in research and filming for Freddie Mercury documentaries. Together with his friend and contemporary Victory Rana—later Lt. General Victory Rana of the Nepalese Army—and Ravi Punjabi, philanthropist and businessman, Freddie numbers among the school’s most famous Old Boys.

By the time he arrived on this pleasant, sprawling fifty-eight-acre campus, Freddie had been indoctrinated into the family faith and was a fully fledged Zoroastrian. At eight, he experienced the Naojote (“Navjote”) ceremony. In common with Christian Confirmation, this embraces girls as well as boys, while resembling more closely in style the male Jewish Bar Mitzvah. The ritual involves a cleansing bath, symbolizing purification of mind and soul; the wearing of a symbolic white
shirt and wool cord, and the chanting of ancient prayers over a flame said to be both sacred and eternal. Such fires are a core feature of the Zoroastrian faith. In some fire temples, it is claimed that flames have burned continuously for thousands of years. The Zendavesta, or sacred scriptures, contain no formal commandments, but simply the “Three Good Things” by which Parsees have long tried to live. “
Humata, Hukhta, Huvareshta
”: “good thoughts, good words, good deeds.”

In Freddie’s day, St. Peter’s was widely considered to be the best boys’ public school in Panchgani. It offered a full English education leading to Cambridge University O-level and A-level examinations, and maintained consistently excellent results. Attracting families from the United States, Canada, and the Gulf as well as from all over India, its school year ran from mid-June to mid-April. With concessions to India’s climate, the main eight-week holiday fell between April and June, with an additional fortnight break at Christmas. Discipline at St. Peter’s was strict, and conditions were on the severe side. While there was hot water for baths on Wednesdays and Saturday lunchtimes, the rest of the week it was cold. Bathing routines were supervised by Matron, who also ran the school hospital with the help of a resident nurse and on-call doctor. The school had its own church, with a when-in-Rome stance: while boys of all religions attended the school, and their faiths were respected, Sunday Mass was compulsory for all. No pupil was allowed off campus unless accompanied by a member of staff. For all this, St. Peter’s was well known as being a caring establishment with a gentle and fun family atmosphere, which nurtured the strengths of pupils to bring out the best in the individual. Whatever he felt about it at the time, Freddie admitted in later life that he felt privileged to have been sent there, knowing the sacrifices his parents had made.

Not only was it a struggle to find the school fees—Freddie’s father was modestly paid as a government clerk, and there was not much money to spare—it was painful for Bomi and Jer to part with their only son and for his sister to be separated from her only sibling.

That sense of privilege was not enough to dispel separation anxiety.
Having grown exceptionally close to his mother and to his sister Kashmira as a small boy, being sent thousands of miles away to school at such a tender age must have been a terrible wrench. It is impossible to imagine Freddie feeling anything other than alone and afraid, longing for a cuddle and a bedtime story as he tucked up at night. Those close to him in later years have told how Freddie harbored a deep resentment towards his parents for “sending him away,” even though he was never less than a respectful and loving adult son. He clearly tried his hardest to overcome his feelings of rejection.

Jer and Bomi must have felt that they were doing the right thing at the time. Giving their son the best start in life undoubtedly caused financial hardship. But sending a shy little boy like Freddie so far away to school was probably their biggest mistake. Some young children appear to deal better than others with prolonged separation from their families. For Freddie, a sensitive child and by his own admission a little clingy, that wrench, at just eight years of age, was initially unbearable. He would cry himself to sleep at night in his narrow dormitory bed, surrounded by a quivering bunch of nineteen other new boys. Deprived of daily one-to-one affection and attention at the most crucial stage of his development and at a deeply impressionable age, Freddie’s outlook and expectations inevitably changed.

He would seek solace in the company of like-minded lads. As well as Victory Rana, he befriended Derrick Branche, who later moved to Australia to become an actor. In 1985, just as Freddie was stealing the show at Live Aid, Branche had a part in the movie
My Beautiful Laundrette
, a comedy drama starring Daniel Day-Lewis which explored relationships between white and Asian communities, and which tackled, poignantly, such issues as homosexuality and racism.

Freddie’s circle also included Farang Irani, later to become a restaurateur in Bombay, and Bruce Murray, last heard of working as a porter at London’s Victoria railway station. Over the next few years these five boys would become inseparable, sleeping close to one another in their dormitory and collaborating on endless schoolboy pranks. Packed off to
either his paternal aunt Jer or his maternal aunt Sheroo during the term and half-term breaks, Freddie was rarely reunited with his parents during his time at St. Peter’s, even during school holidays.

“You had to do what you were told, so the most sensible thing was to make the most of it,” said Freddie, years later. “I learnt to look after myself, and I grew up quickly.”

So began the molding of the personality of the “real” Freddie, which would stay true until the end of his life.

The realization that he would have to hold his own and stand up to the school bullies proved a steep learning curve for Freddie. It also dawned on him that the name would have to go. “Farrokh” was a mouthful, pronounced as it was the Persian way: “Far
roch
,” as in “loch,” as opposed to the African “Far
ouk
.” He was relieved when teachers and friends adopted the diminutive of a respectable English name. “Freddie” he became. Thankfully, it stuck. His parents and family raised no objections, and refer to him as “Freddie” to this day. The change of surname would come much later, for different reasons.

When Freddie was about ten years old, he began to display an aloof, somewhat condescending streak, which he would retain for the rest of his life. While waspish on occasion, he was neither unkind nor malicious.

He was simply not the typical team player. In sport, he excelled at solo and one-to-one activities such as chess, sprinting, boxing, and table tennis. He became school table tennis champion before he turned eleven. While rugby and football were not his thing, he was said to have enjoyed cricket, although he denied this later. Whether he felt that an open love for the game would harm his hard-rock image, who can say? In 1958, aged almost twelve, he won the Junior All-Rounder prize, and the following year took first prize for Academic Prowess. He assumed lead roles in a variety of plays, and sang a solo in the Seniors’ production of
The Indian Love Call
. His favorite subject was art. Much of his free time was spent sketching and painting, particularly for his aunt Sheroo and grandparents in Bombay. He also began to indulge enthusiastically in extracurricular music.

Even during the late fifties and early sixties, Bombay enjoyed a cosmopolitan East-meets-West culture which allowed Western pop and rock to take hold. While Freddie loved the classical music he studied, particularly opera, he adored the contemporary even more. He took up the piano, passing exams up to and including Grade IV in both Theory and Practical, and joined the choir. With his close friends, he formed his first band, the Hectics. Thanks to his lively boogie-woogie piano-playing style, Freddie was soon the talk of the town. The Hectics started performing at school concerts and at the annual fete. Girls from local schools would stand at the front and scream their lungs out, having heard that this was the way to behave in front of a group. The pop idols of the day included Elvis Presley, Cliff Richard, Fats Domino, and Little Richard, and it was from these artists that Freddie drew inspiration. He practiced hard to emulate their styles. He was not yet front man material, however, and took a willing backseat to his friend Bruce Murray, who played guitar and sang lead vocals.

“There was also, of course, a school choir, which sang all the traditional choral works and hymns, and which practiced regularly in order to lead the singing at the school’s church services,” remembered Freddie’s former school chum and Hectics bandmate Derrick Branche.

“The choir was about twenty-five-strong, and we would often be mixed with girls from one of our sister schools in the town. Not only did Freddie love the choir, but I believe he also loved one of the girls, too—fifteen-year-old Gita Bharucha, if I’m not mistaken!”

Although it has been reported that Freddie was sexually active at St. Peter’s from the age of about fourteen, and that his encounters were mainly with other boys and even a couple of hired school hands, Freddie’s first-ever girlfriend is not so sure.

“I never thought Bucky was gay,” Gita told me. “Not at all. Never saw any evidence of that. Maybe his masters knew, and were discreet. We his friends were certainly not aware of it. He was quite the flamboyant performer, and absolutely in his element on stage. Invariably he had the roles of girls in plays!”

Having married, changed her name to Choksi, and moved to Frankfurt, where she worked for an Indian tour operator, Gita was not easy to trace. When I found her, she was at first reluctant to talk about Freddie. Eventually she agreed, and we met in London.

“I first met Freddie in 1955, when I started at the Kimmins School in Panchgani,” she told me.

“It was run by Protestant missionaries from England. I left there in 1963. For most of the ten years that Freddie was in ‘Panchi,’ we were friends. I was from Bombay, but I lived with my mother and grandparents in Panchi. I was a day scholar. The way it worked was that the boys from St. Peter’s would attend the Kimmins kindergarten, then continue from Standard Three at St. Peter’s proper. A group of us were in the same class together for years. Victory Rana and I were together right through school. And Bucky—that’s what we used to call Freddie, because of his teeth. Derrick Branche was another one.

“Bucky and I were particularly close—but just good friends. Nothing intimate. Holding hands, that’s all. We used to rent bicycles at three rupees a day and go cycling. We’d also go out in rowing boats on Mahableshwar Lake. Mum would let me have a party, or a few friends over to lunch, after which we would go for walks or play games. Bucky often came during the holidays and spent time at our home. He was extremely polite and well mannered. My mother and grandparents liked him enormously.”

Janet Smith, a Panchgani schoolmistress who lived at St. Peter’s during Freddie’s tenure because her mother taught him art, was in no doubt about Freddie’s homosexuality.

“He had this habit of calling one ‘darling,’ which seemed a little fey. I just knew that he was homosexual when he was here. It was unusual in those days, admittedly, but almost accepted in a boy like Freddie. Normally it would have been just ghastly. But with Freddie, somehow it wasn’t. It was OK. Not a phase: it was very much inside him, a fundamental part of him. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him, as the others would make fun of him. Funny thing was, he didn’t seem to mind.”

Despite the fact that Gita Bharucha and Freddie had been inseparable, she never heard from him again after he left Panchgani.

“Very sad, I know, but that was it. As if he wanted to divorce himself from life in India and get on with the next stage.”

By the time he reached Class Ten, Freddie’s grades had begun to slip. He failed the end-of-year examination and left the school ahead of year eleven. Freddie never actually sat his O-levels. Possibly distracted by confusion over his sexuality, and by the more creative pursuits of music and art, he lost interest in his studies and set his sights on more glamorous goals. While previous biographies report that he left St. Peter’s with a string of O-levels and with exceptional grades in English language, history, and art, he did not. Quite why the facts were distorted by early publicists only becomes clear when set against the incredible academic achievements of his fellow band members. Brian May studied physics and maths at Imperial College London, and graduated with a BSc Hons in Physics. The PhD he began in astrophysics would be completed thirty years later. John Deacon achieved a first-class Honours degree in electronics at Chelsea College, now part of King’s College London, while Roger Taylor won a place at the London Hospital Medical College to study dentistry, later abandoning the course to focus on music.