Lost Without You: Loving and Losing Tanya

by Jones, Vinnie

  ‘It’s this bloke, Johnny Watts. Well, he’s older than me …’ I said, nervously. ‘I mean, I’ve never met his daughter or anything,’ I added, not making all that much sense. I don’t know why I was so nervous. ‘They’re getting married,’ I said, as though Johnny was marrying his daughter – did I mention I was nervous? ‘He wants all the boys from the pub to go.’

  Vinnie, just come out with it for Christ’s sake.

  ‘Would you come?’ I finally said. ‘Would you come with me? It’d be our first date.’

  I was amazed Tans agreed (pending her chat with Lou, of course), given that it had taken me the best part of ten minutes to ask her. But for me, the pressure was off a bit – even though this was our first date on our own, I knew that all the lads from the pub and their wives and girlfriends would be going, so I’d be set if it didn’t go too well.

  The day of the wedding came, and honestly, I still can’t believe what I saw.

  Johnny had transformed his little bungalow on St Agnells Lane into … well, into something, let me tell you. He’d put in artificial ponds all around the garden, and you had to walk over a bridge to get to the other side. It was bizarre. He’d also put a massive marquee up at the back which he’d managed to attach to the back of his house; there were drapes everywhere, too, and chandeliers hanging from the top. And we also noticed he’d taken his back fence down, so that you could now walk straight out of the marquee, over the bridge and the ponds, trailing your hand along the satin drapes if you so wished, and out onto the football pitch that adjoined his property to the rear.

  As one sage put it as we arrived, ‘What the fuck?’

  The party was in full swing, and we were all sitting round at a table. I was proudly introducing Tans as my date and everyone was amazed. ‘Fucking hell, Jonesy, are you sure?’ They knew I was punching way over my class.

  ‘Yeah, fucking yeah,’ I said, ‘don’t worry about it, lads.’ Everyone knew I’d sworn off marriage, or even a serious relationship, so this was news: Vinnie Jones had a girlfriend.

  But we were having a great night. People were coming by to say hello – I was the Babycham guy, that night.

  They were amazed I was with a date, finally. Up till then, I’d been very happy to just rock and roll with the boys. I loved men’s company; I had to be in the pub after training, had to have the lads live at my house. Most days we had the crash on … so for me to have brought a date? This was news.

  ‘Oh, you must be special because he doesn’t usually have one on his arm,’ one of my mates told Tans. ‘He’s never brought anyone to one of the dos.’

  One of the wives agreed. ‘He’s never brought one out,’ she said, as though she’d seen a UFO.

  I looked at Tans and said, ‘This is my family, Tans, you know?’

  And she knew; she always knew. She was having a great time, too; the craic was mighty that night. And Tans looked so beautiful – she was wearing a little white, cotton, lacy dress, just above the knee. Awesome.

  After a few hours, I believed I’d nailed it with her. We were about to leave – I didn’t want to stay for the sloppy punch-up and all the rest of it. It had been too great. But as we were preparing our goodbyes, all of a sudden Johnny Watts came over.

  ‘Vinnie my boy!’ he shouted. He loved the celebrity stuff and I was playing for Chelsea at the time, so I was a favourite of his.

  ‘We’re about to do the laser thing, Vin,’ Watts said. ‘You just watch this.’

  All the lads were laughing. ‘This is all to impress you, Vinnie,’ someone said.

  Just then, the laser show began. The music started and we heard ‘Eye to eye contact’ and it’s the actual, real-to-goodness, Edwin fucking Starr. In a marquee, on St Agnells Lane, Hemel Hempstead, singing:

  If she raised her head her eyes caught mine

  And that was all that I needed

  In her eyes I saw the need for love

  The warm, soft feeling

  ’Cause we made, eye to eye contact

  Tans said, ‘Edwin Starr?’

  I said, ‘Just a regular Saturday night, love.’

  It doesn’t get any better than that. Until it does. Never had the words of that song sounded so exciting and electric.

  Once Starr had finished his set, Johnny took the microphone and made a grand announcement.

  ‘Everybody outside, the bride and groom are leaving!’ he intoned. We all trooped out, and there, out on the public football pitch beyond his house, we all watched, gobsmacked, as a helicopter appeared out of the dark night. And it was then we realized that it was preparing to land.

  Only Johnny Watts could do this. People up and down St Agnells Street were freaking out but Johnny didn’t care – things were a bit different then. He’d never asked anyone; he’d just taken the fence down and brought in a helicopter because this was his daughter’s big day and she deserved the best. The bride and groom walked out of the marquee, across the bridges over the ponds and, ducking, headed into the helicopter, whose blades continued to whirl in the Hemel Hempstead night.

  The entire party had moved out to the football pitch to watch the scene. I pulled Tans into me, standing behind her with my arms around her shoulders. She leaned into me and we settled there, perfectly content, perfectly fitting into each other, at ease, as though we’d known each other forever – which in a way I suppose we had. We were surrounded by everyone from the wedding, but we were alone together. It was the most perfect moment you can imagine.

  The blades whirred harder, the grass shook, dust flew around and the helicopter started to wobble just above the ground, then steadily climb. Everyone around us cheered and waved. I pulled Tans even closer to me and we watched this great whirlybird rise up into the dark night, its lights getting dimmer and the sound of the engines fading until it was just a faint shudder in the sky. And then it was gone; the bride and groom in their helicopter were gone and we don’t know how long we’ve been standing there, watching this hilarious and ridiculous and touching thing, this magical moment at the start of two people’s lives together …

  When we finally came back to earth, when we finally woke from that dream into which we’d fallen, we looked around and realized we were alone. Everyone else had gone back into the marquee to dance to whatever people dance to at weddings. We had been so wrapped up in each other that we hadn’t noticed, not at all, that we were the only ones left. The helicopter had flown and we had stood together, perfectly still in the new knowledge of each other; we had gelled instantly, welded together like two people who’d finally found home.

  Tans said, ‘Oh, that was so lovely.’

  I said, ‘That’s going to be us one day.’ And it was.

  About a year after that amazing night, I remember Tans asking me, ‘What do you want from me? What can I give you?’

  And I just said to her, ‘I just want to be loved, because I’ve been in turmoil.’

  My old man has often said, ‘You had a great childhood – look at the life I gave you.’ But honestly, my childhood was fucked. From 15 years old I was living on people’s couches – Tanya knew the story because I’d told her that first long night at Hunter’s Oak. Although we didn’t know it then, we were falling in love with each other that very first night – in retrospect it felt like we had been taking our vows. When I had told her about my childhood, Tans had burst into tears: ‘How could this happen to you?’ she said.

  And finally, when Tans said, ‘What do you want?’ I found myself saying, ‘I just need to be loved unconditionally.’ She was the only person on the planet who could do that for me. She understood it; she understood what I needed. And it never wavered. Much, much later, whatever Tanya was doing, wherever she was – if she was out somewhere in England, or having fun around L.A – even if she was having a whale of a time, she’d tell everyone, ‘We’ve got to get back. Vin doesn’t like coming home to an empty house.’ Tans knew what I’d been through, the fights and the couches and the emptiness and the loneliness and not know
ing where my next ‘home’ was going to be. And she was never going to have me come home to an empty house. That was the promise she made.

  Today, six months after she’s gone, I came home to an empty house. I sat in the living room, on my expensive couch in my lovely L.A. house, and even though I could feel her all around me, and even though I had one of my little chats with her, I knew deep down that I would always come home to an empty house. I felt a chill then, even though it was 24 degrees out; a deep, bone-deep chill, as though I was sick.

  But I wasn’t sick. I was just alone again.

  The hardest part of it now is that I’ve gone full circle; an empty house is all I’ll ever come home to. Kaley has been amazing – she’s really stepped up to keep the family together and to look after me – but she won’t live with me forever …

  But something interesting has happened too: for the first time in my life, I am genuinely OK with being alone. I think that’s because I’ve got Tans with me, everywhere I go. In the old days, everyone would say, ‘Oh, Vin always has to have a gang with him.’ But not anymore.

  I’m just back from a short promotional tour. I did four nights – Watford to Leeds, Leeds to Sheffield – 700 miles in four days. Before I lost Tans, I would have had a driver for a trip like that and a couple of mates with me, too, probably. But this time I did all the driving on my own; I think it’s because that was my time with Tans. I feel she’s with me. I have my little thought chats with her, and the time passes, and before I know it, I’m bounding out on stage singing a Madness song.

  The thought chats make all the difference. She’s everywhere with me. Not like an angel, or a spirit, but a real presence, in the air, in the sounds the air makes, in the way the light falls across a couch or the floor, that floor right there. See?

  9

  WHAT HAPPENED IN NUNEATON

  At 3 Hunter’s Oak, Tanya worked on getting back to full health. After she and Steve had split, Tans had decided to create a lovely home filled with a whole bunch of mums to her Kaley. There was Jo, Julie, Jane, and Mandy – Kaley loved Jane the most back then, because when she was a kid she thought Jane was the coolest. Julie was the sensible one – she would sometimes go around and try and help Tans learn how to grocery shop on a budget, all that. Remember, Tans was a baby, and was in charge of a little nipper who asked for stuff. Kaley vividly remembers desperately wanting some Matey’s Bubble Bath – the one with the sailor’s hat for a top – but Julie said it was too expensive and mum needed to be firm with her. (Tans got it for her anyway.)

  The gang would order an Indian or Chinese and sit around the table putting the world to rights over a glass of wine. There were endless games of Frustration, and so much laughter.

  That was why when I arrived at the door late that fateful night, Kaley called out for her mum – Kaley hated being left out if there was fun to be had downstairs. Usually, the girls would take it in turns to go up and check on Kaley – sometimes Kaley would lock Jane in the cupboard because she didn’t want her to go back downstairs.

  Tans was the only one of the gang who had a child. The rest were all single or starting to date – usually one of my mates, actually. The two houses side-by-side on Hunter’s Oak must have looked from the outside like a cliched version of those TV shows of the nineties, the ones where in the summer the boys are doing the gardening with their tops off and rocking the washed-out jeans, then the camera pans to find all the girls passing by on roller skates.

  Tans was just a few years past her transplant, but nothing stopped her living a normal life. It was clear she’d decided to just get on with it. She would take Kaley to the amusement park at Chessington or Alton Towers and, once, to Disneyland. Everywhere they walked in those places there were big signs saying:

  PERSONS WITH THE FOLLOWING CONDITIONS SHOULD NOT RIDE:

  Heart Conditions or Abnormal Blood Pressure

  According to Kaley, though, Tans just ignored the warnings and rode everything she could – she’d be hysterically laughing the whole time and Kaley would just stare at her like she’d lost her mind.

  Sometimes, too, all the girls would go and watch Shane play music. He’d moved to the States for a while in his twenties and when he came back he would play all those Laurel Canyon songs – the Jackson Browne stuff, the Graham Nash stuff – in pubs and restaurants and clubs around Watford. But Shane never sang a note without his adoring sister in the front row, singing along to every single word. Tans was his biggest fan, she was so proud of him up there doing his thing. It was like she was born with an overflow of love, too much for one person.

  Because Kaley knew all about the transplant, she would accompany Tans to every appointment, at least early on. Whenever Kaley was at Harefield, she got some sad comfort from the fact that she’d see people there who looked a lot sicker than her mum did. They even had a club for the transplant patients called ‘The Hamster Club’, because you puff out after you have a transplant – though Tans hated it and never wanted to be part of it. She didn’t look like a transplant recipient; she looked healthy and strong (though her skin darkened after the surgery – no one ever knew why).

  These would be long days for the two of them. Tans called it ‘clinic’, as in, ‘we have clinic today’, and she and Kaley would go through all the tests together. These involved Tans having her bloods drawn and getting weighed and doing stress tests. Kaley remembers her mum laughing and being happy and cuddly, always making sure that her daughter felt safe and not scared. And then there was the long wait for the results, until she’d finally get to see Dr Mitchell and he’d give her the good news.

  But on a day-to-day basis, Tans was just living a normal life – and then some. Tans would go into the garden with Kaley and I’d watch her show her all the gymnastics moves she knew, right there on the summer lawn, her second heart working just fine, her limbs all lithe and strong – a brilliant athlete, she was. She was basically a fit young woman … until she wasn’t. There was one birthday in particular when Kaley had wanted to go to a Spice Girls concert, but her mum hadn’t been feeling too great, so Julie and Mandy took her (though part of me wonders if Tans felt fine and just didn’t fancy the Spice Girls).

  There were other times when Tans’ health affected their lives. She had to be very careful about which pets were allowed in the house. George the rabbit had been banished to the shed because he was a danger to Tans’ health; puppies were OK, but birds were not because of the diseases they can carry, so it was no parrots. Kaley desperately wanted a monkey – a monkey in Hemel Hempstead would have been brilliant, of course – but Tans had to say no.

  As for me and Tanya, well, things were going great. We were in love but we were still finding our way through the relationship … that is, until Tans had to go up to Nuneaton for a minor operation.

  The heavy drugs Tans had to take took their toll and led to her needing a partial hysterectomy. I didn’t pry into what exactly was going on but I knew it was serious and it scared her; she’d already been through so much, this felt unfair, somehow.

  Tans headed the 80 miles up the M1 to have her operation and I missed her every second. I hated not being with her (that wouldn’t change in 27 years). Her friends Mandy and Jo had gone with her, so she was set for support and visitors, but it didn’t feel right. Already, I think, I looked at Tans as a member of my family. You know that feeling when you meet someone and instantly their needs are your needs? Or you feel so in tune with them that you don’t settle until they’re OK? Well, that was me and Tans, very soon after we’d reconnected.

  One day I’d been training at Chelsea when I got a call from Mandy. She told me that the doctors wanted to keep Tans in after her operation for a few days so they could monitor her; I think whenever any doctor heard about the transplant, they were extra careful.

  Then Mandy put Tans on the phone. Her voice was tiny, far away, scared: ‘Vincent,’ she said, ‘will you come and get me?’

  My heart sank and filled at the same time. I felt so sorry for h
ow sad and scared Tans sounded and I wanted to fix it, right there and then. Nearly 20 years later I’d tell Angela Levin of the Daily Mail:

  I take my strength from Tanya. She believes her life was saved to save me, and in return I feel it is my role to look after her and give her the best life I can.

  She has given me stability and it is my responsibility to be there for her. When we are apart, I make sure she is never on her own.

  Goodness knows where I would be without her.

  But those words were true in 1992 when she called me from her hospital bed in Nuneaton.

  I’m surprised I wasn’t nicked on the M1 to be honest. Let’s just say that if you were driving north sometime in 1992 and a Range Rover passed you doing at least a ton, I’m sorry.

  Unbeknownst to me, Tanya was preparing for my arrival. She had borrowed some makeup from the nurses and had dolled herself up for me. She really was an amazing person. (Kaley always says to me, ‘Mum was this really positive, loving, happy person who didn’t seem any different to anyone else.’) So there she was, lying in her hospital bed, her lippy shining, her hair all done up; she looked so beautiful. The second I saw her I was determined to get her out of there, immediately – well, she’d asked, for a start!

  The doctors, though, weren’t having it. After a whole bunch of back and forth, they weren’t budging; Tans had to stay a few more days until they were sure everything was OK.

  Sorry, lads, but no. I was not leaving without her – not in a million years, not if you paid me a million quid. There was only one thing for it. I gave her the eye and she beamed back at me. Then I pulled back the covers, wrapped her in one of the hospital blankets and did the full An Officer and a Gentlemen thing – I picked her up and, with the doctors complaining and the nurses quietly cheering, I carried her out of the hospital in my arms and laid her on the rear seat of my car.

  Jo and Mandy couldn’t believe it, but I didn’t care; she was coming home with me.