In a career replete with success, secrecy and tragedy, one of the most enduringly fascinating elements of Queen star Freddie Mercury’s story was his life-long relationship with his “soulmate” Mary Austin.
One of his closest and most trusted friends, the pair were in a relationship and even briefly engaged before Mercury confided in Austin about his sexuality.
When he died in 1991 of Aids-related bronchial pneumonia, the singer left his London home and its contents to Austin, which has been left untouched as a shrine to the superstar for 30 years.
But now Austin has announced she will auction an intimate collection of 1,500 items belonging to the late Queen star, including some of his handwritten lyrics and dazzling stage costumes.
“The collection takes you deeper within the individual and the man I knew,” Austin said, speaking to the BBC.
Not one to soak up the limelight, Austin lives a quiet life and has rarely spoken in public since Mercury died. But the pair were inseperable, even after they ended their romantic relationship.
“I miss the fun, the humour, his warmth, his energy,” she reflected.
Mercury, who was reportedly inspired by his relationship with Austin to write Queen’s hit song Love of My Life, said he’d love her: “Until I draw my last breath. We’ll probably grow old together.”
The extraordinary relationship has long fascinated fans, and was recently played out on screen in the 2018 film Bohemian Rhapsody.
But who was Mary Austin and how did she come to develop such a bond with Mercury?
‘He was like no one I had ever met before’
A young Freddie Mercury first met Austin in 1969 when he was 24 years old, a year before he would form what would become Queen.
The daughter of a wallpaper cutter and a maid, both of whom were deaf, 19-year-old Austin was from a working class family in Fulham, west London.
The year the pair met, Austin managed to land a job at the prestigious fashion boutique Biba in Kensington, and it was here that she met Mercury, who had just finished studying at Ealing Art College and worked in a clothing stall.
Although Austin was at first hesitant about the sometimes intimidating Mercury, love quickly blossomed between the pair and soon the young couple were living in a cramped £10-a-week bedsit together near Kensington market while Mercury worked on his music career.
“He was like no one I had ever met before,” Austin told OK! Magazine in 2000. “He was very confident, and I have never been confident. We grew together. I liked him – and it went on from there.”
For a long time, Austin was the breadwinner of the pair as Mercury’s music career struggled to take off.
“She [Mary] was incredibly important,” Peter Freestone, Mercury’s PA of 13 years, said in a Channel 5 documentary about the singer.
“Don’t forget, she looked after him for the first years when he wasn’t making a penny and Mary was working. So she paid the rent, she paid for everything when they were living together from 1969.”
“They were very much a pair,” Yasmine Pettigrew, a friend of the couple told Channel 5. “He watched over her as well. He always wanted to know, if he was with Mary, that Mary was okay.
“She stuck by him and he stuck by her. You put your life in your hands if you tried to come between them, that’s for sure. Everyone knew that. They had a bond which people who are together forever have.”
‘I think you are gay’ – separation in 1976
The year Queen’s debut album was released, Mary and Freddie had been together for four years when the newly famous singer proposed unexpectedly.
“I was speechless. I remember thinking, ‘I don’t understand what’s going on’,” Austin later said of the engagement. “I just whispered, ‘Yes. I will.’”
In the following years, Queen’s fame accelerated with the release of albums Sheer Heart Attack (1974) and A Night at the Opera (1975). The latter contained the hit song Love of My Life, reportedly written by Mercury for Austin.
However, it soon became clear that all was not well within the relationship. Returning home late each night, Austin thought Mercury, now an international star, was having an affair with another woman. But in 1976 he divulged his feelings about his sexuality to her.
“I’ll never forget that moment,” Austin told the Daily Mail in 2013.
“Being a bit naive, it had taken me a while to realise the truth. Afterward, he felt good about having finally told me he was bisexual. Although I do remember saying to him at the time, ‘No Freddie, I don’t think you are bisexual. I think you are gay.’”
‘The only friend I’ve got is Mary, and I don’t want anybody else’
The revelation caused the pair to break up, but Mary remained very close to the star and even began working for his management company.
“She went on the road with them. There are photographs of them together backstage at concerts into the late Seventies by which stage they were no longer a couple,” said Mercury biographer Mark Blake. “She stayed as part of the band’s entourage because she was part of his entourage. She was the most important person in that entourage.”
Even when Mercury fell in love with his long-term partner Jim Hutton, Mary was still a constant in his life, and the pair’s relationship began to cause difficulties in their respective romantic lives.
He once said: “All my lovers asked me why they couldn’t replace Mary but it’s simply impossible. The only friend I’ve got is Mary, and I don’t want anybody else. To me, she was my common-law wife. To me, it was a marriage. We believe in each other. That’s enough for me. I couldn’t fall in love with a man the same way as I have with Mary.”
Austin later went on to have two children with painter Piers Cameron, but he eventually found the bond between the pair too much and dropped out of Mary’s life altogether.
“He had always felt overshadowed by Freddie,” she said to OK Magazine.
Austin stayed by Mercury’s side until his death
Long before he told any of his other friends or band members that he had Aids, Mercury divulged his secret to Austin. When he died in 1991 of Aids-related bronchial pneumonia at age 45, Austin was by his side just as she had been throughout his career.
Mercury wanted to keep the details of his illness secret, and Austin supported his decision. She also kept his promise to collect his ashes and place them at a private location never to be revealed.
He left her half his reported £75 million estate, including the 28-room west London mansion in which Austin still lives to this day.
“It was the loneliest and most difficult time of my life after Freddie died,” Austin said to OK.
“When he died I felt we’d had a marriage. We’d lived our vows. We’d done it for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health.
“I lost somebody who I thought was my eternal love.”
