And yes, I’d thought ahead: there were pillows and a duvet back there, so she’d be comfortable. Jo and Mandy brought all the flowers she’d been sent, and we put them all around the car. Then very gingerly I drove south, hardly breaking 40mph this time, all the while telling her she was going to be fine.
Later, when her dad heard the story, I think he realized I was in it for the long haul, which was a good thing. Remember, nationally I had a bit of a reputation by 1992. In 1987, I’d grabbed Gazza by his meat and two veg; there had been a few red cards since then, shall we say, and perhaps some tackles that might have warranted more than a yellow or a talking to (here’s looking at you, McMahon). The Soccer’s Hard Men video came out in 1992 – the one in which I extolled the virtues of football thuggery, and for which my old mate Sam Hammam had amusingly called me ‘a mosquito brain’. I’d been fined twenty grand and banned for six months by the F.A. for it (though the ban had been a suspended one, and I played on).
But when Lou heard I’d sprung Tans from hospital, driven her home, and then looked after her for the next few days, I think he thought, hold on a minute …
I didn’t do it for effect, though. I did it because finally I was able to fully love someone and show them that love in a real and concrete way. It felt natural, and right. That was us, right there – sorted. We honestly never looked back. It felt like Gulliver’s Travels – two big giants had been put on the planet and been told, ‘go find each other’.
And we did, right there on the M1, 40 m.p.h. on the inside lane, driving south from beautiful Nuneaton in a car filled with flowers.
One day, Tans was out picking up Kaley from school and I decided to make a shepherd’s pie for when they got back. I remember needing a spatula to spread out the mashed potato on top and I couldn’t find one. There was one drawer I hadn’t looked in, but it wouldn’t open – it was jammed with something. I tugged and tugged and managed to pry it free, only to see that it was filled with red letters from the electric, the gas, the TV, everyone. I knew she was a bit short of cash, but this was something else. I knew what I had to do – I ran around to my house next door, got my chequebook and I just wrote a whole load of cheques.
When Tans got back, I told her what I’d done, and I said, ‘I’m taking care of all this now; I’m moving in.’ Tans tried to make a joke of it – ‘Well, they just kept sending these red letters – were they just trying to scare me?’ But we knew this was a watershed moment for our relationship.
I didn’t make a fuss of it. Instead, I got the shepherd’s pie out of the oven, dished it up and the three of us – Tanya, Kaley and Vin, a new family – sat there eating it and grinning from ear to ear.
10
DING DONG THE BELLS ARE GONNA CHIME
I didn’t have a moment to waste: I had to marry Tanya.
I felt a love that I hadn’t felt for a long, long time. I hadn’t seen much of my mum; she had moved to live in a bedsit in a nursing home, and it was hard to see her for a while – it just didn’t feel natural. I’d fallen out with the old man, too; I didn’t have much to do with him after he punched me through a window. I just think I hadn’t had a lot of love. I had moved in with a big local family, John and Wendy Moore and their four kids, when I was 18, and I mostly stayed with them for the next five years.
By the time I moved to play for Leeds the old man came back on the scene and he came to all the games, but when I went to Sheffield United, he didn’t come as much because we were losing – ‘I don’t want to watch that shit,’ he’d say.
Tans knew all this. She said to me, ‘What’s missing? What?’ She’s the only person ever to ask me that. ‘What’s missing? What can I do? What do you want from me?’ It was probably one of the first times I’d been honest with anybody for a long, long time, and I just said, ‘I want you to unconditionally love me.’ Just like in the movies.
And Tanya just threw her arms around me and said, ‘Forever and ever and ever.’
One day, Tans and me were stood looking over the garden to see Kaley in a toy electric Jeep we’d bought her, driving around with Aaron, who was about one or two, in the passenger seat.
I never ever thought I’d get married – I was going to be single for the rest of my life. But out there in the garden those two little dots were bonding in a toy car, and in the house, Tans and I stood watching, filled with love for them and for each other. See why I didn’t have a minute to waste?
So now marriage was all I wanted, and I really needed to tell someone. The next day I was in my full-size car, and I called my father.
He picked up and said, ‘How you doing, son?’
I said, ‘I’m going to ask Tanya to marry me.’
He said, ‘Oh, wow. Yeah, OK. Anyway, I’ve been up to the house and fed the pheasants …’ And that was that. All I could do was drive around, on my own as ever.
I decided to drive to see Lou. By then, he and I had started to play golf a bit and become closer. On the way to Lou’s, I called another friend of mine to tell him what I was planning, but his reaction was even worse than my dad’s – he said, ‘It won’t last six months.’ I was very hurt and made sure he wasn’t invited to the wedding. (I’ve seen the guy since, actually, a few years ago, and he apologized. I said, ‘Why would you say something like that?’ and he just said, ‘I didn’t think she’d put up with you!’)
When I arrived at Lou’s, I got straight to the point. ‘I want to ask Tans if I can marry her,’ I said.
Lou was concerned about his daughter’s health issues. He said, ‘Listen son, you know she’s not an ordinary girl? It’s going to be a tough road.’
I said, ‘I think that’s what I’m here for. I think that’s my duty. I think that’s what it’s all about. I will look after her.’
And Lou believed me. And I looked after her, as I’d promised, for the rest of her life.
Meanwhile, Tans was waiting at home for me to be done with asking everyone’s permission except hers. She knew it was coming.
When I got home, I carried her upstairs and put her on the bed. I even remembered to take her shoes off … and then I’d knelt down by the bed and asked her.
Tans burst into tears; this was not a good sign.
‘What are you crying for?’ I said, worried half to death.
‘What took you so long?’ Tans said.
We were married on Friday 24 June 1994, and again on Saturday 25 June 1994. That can happen when you’re trying to avoid the press. First, you head to the registry office on Clarendon Road in Watford to do the paperwork and then the next day you have a massive blow-out affair and take your vows in your new house.
Right before we got married, I’d bought us an old farmstead in Redbourn, ten minutes up the road from Hunters Oak. I wanted a place that was ours and ours alone; a place where Kaley could run around free and where Aaron could visit whenever he wanted. And I wanted somewhere where Tans could watch the spring and summer arrive in the skies and in the fields. She loved the sun so much and she’d overcome so much … I wanted the best for her and the farm at Redbourn was a first step.
When we bought it, the place was a falling-down two-bedroom bungalow lived in by some travellers. Me and my old man took a year to rebuild it and we finished it the day before the wedding. It was perfect. The landscaping, the fixtures, the gardens – all finished just in time for hundreds of people to descend on it and celebrate with us as Mr White, the local vicar, blessed the union.
We were also blessed by the tabloids. We sold the Saturday wedding to the News of the World – they paid £100,000, which was a lot of dough in 1994. I didn’t care that it was all ‘Beauty and the Beast’ stuff; I knew where our hearts were. What the News of the World cared about was their investment, though, so they brought cardboard boxes to shield the whole thing from other paparazzi and even from helicopters that were circling, trying to get pictures. There was one road in and out of Redbourn and the News of the World blocked it off, making it hard for all the guests to get through. At o
ne point, I had to jump a wall to avoid the paps after the registry office ceremony. Tans was surrounded by all her friends to keep her secret, too.
The night before, I had my stag do at the Aubrey Park Hotel while Tans and her girls were back at the house. The morning of the wedding, Tans went to a local café with all her mates, her rollers still in, to have breakfast – that’s how down to earth she was. There were 200 people present for the Saturday ceremony and 400 in the evening.
It was hot as hell that day. What I didn’t know was that Tans could barely walk; the medication she was on for her heart had the terrible side effect of giving her gout. She was in agony; her mum even called Dr Mitchell at Harefield and he called in a prescription to the chemist on Garston Parade (she would get her drugs there throughout her life).
In his speech, Lou said something special: ‘Vinnie has a heart problem too – it’s too big for his body.’
(Later, Tans would tell OK! magazine, ‘He’s the most emotional man I’ve ever met. He sometimes wakes me up in the middle of the night just to tell me he loves me. He worries about me a lot and he is great in a crisis. He holds me so tight he almost crushes me.’)
It was a great wedding, even though Tans was in so much pain that she had to go and buy bigger shoes that very morning just so she could walk. We made everyone give a donation to Harefield instead of presents.
At the end of the night we left in a helicopter, as promised, and went to Juan-les-Pins, half-way between Cannes and Nice, because Peter Sarstedt’s ‘Where Do You Go To My Lovely?’ was our favourite tune and that’s one of the places the character goes in the song.
But it wasn’t to be the last time that a helicopter would come to Redbourn, and next time it wasn’t anywhere near as romantic.
11
HE TOOK ONE THROUGH THE WINDOW
On the field, I’d left Chelsea and returned to Wimbledon; I would play another six years there.
My day off from Wimbledon was Tuesday, and I’d fill each of them with hunting, fishing and, I’m sorry to say, drinking. One Tuesday in November 1997, three years after we’d got married, I awoke to a late autumn day that would turn into a beauty: sunny and 11 degrees. I’d rushed out to do what I loved the most – tracking pheasants across the fields.
Buying the farm and doing it up had been a dream come true. This was a farm that had been there since the end of the thirteenth century and was famous in the county. We, on the other hand, were just two kids from solidly working-class backgrounds: Tans grew up on a Gaddesden estate, and my house was adjacent to a council estate, Bedmond, and that’s where all my friends lived and where I hung out. We never dreamed, either of us, that we’d one day own a three-acre plot at the end of a dirt track.
I was determined to make it magical, especially for the kids, so I bought every kind of animal. But, to be honest, it spiralled out of control a bit. For a start, we had eight chickens and two cockerels, a pair of ducks and a couple of ferrets and a rabbit, of course. Then there were the two Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs – Kaley named them Pete and Dud. Only problem was, at the time I wasn’t an expert pig sexer (I’m still not), so I missed the fact that they were gilts – females. Which would have been fine, except I also thought it would be fun to have a boar – him I called Horace. Well, as the world turns, so the thoughts of pigs will turn to love, and soon I had piglets coming out of my ears.
It felt like we had magic dust sprinkled on us every day.
Then there were the peacocks. What’s a country farm without a pair of peacocks? There was a pet store a couple of miles from the farm and one day they had two peacocks for sale. Done, bosh. Now we were the proud owners of two beautiful birds, which we named Elvis and Priscilla. One day soon after, Kaley came running into the kitchen heartbroken: there was no sign of Elvis and Priscilla. I honestly never thought they’d fly away; we fed them berries and grain and the odd insect – we even gave them livestock feed, which is like the best French food for a peacock. Why would they fly away when they were being treated to five-course cuisine at Chez Jones?
But I wasn’t having Kaley be so upset; we were a little family now and she already meant the world to me. So I jumped in the car and went back to the pet store; luckily, they had two other peacocks, so I bought them, hoping it would make up for the loss of Elvis and Priscilla.
And, just like the first two, these peacocks got the best of everything: I even gave them a bit more livestock feed so they wouldn’t be tempted to fly off. Well bugger me if a couple of weeks later there was no sign of them! What was I doing wrong? They were living like prince and princesses … Back to the store, two more peacocks, livestock feed, Kaley happy, bosh.
Two more weeks, no peacocks. By now I was pretty much done with this malarkey, but Kaley and Tans loved those birds, and I have to say when they displayed their feathers it was a sight to see. But I told Kaley this was the last time I was replacing them. Peacocks aren’t cheap – it was costing me around two hundred quid every time. The owner of the store, of course, was very happy to see me, though he must have thought I had a weird peafowl fetish or something.
Driving home, I had a nagging feeling in my brain, with the peacocks in the back staring at me as I drove. They seemed a bit smug to be honest … not to mention familiar. And then it struck me: these fuckers were Elvis and Priscilla and had been all along. They were just flying back to the store and I’d go and drop another two hundred quid to repatriate them.
Clever sods, peacocks (and pet store owners).
But I didn’t really mind because it was a little bit of heaven for all of us, but especially for Kaley and Aaron – we’d send her out to get the eggs every day, and they had motorbikes and quad bikes and a swimming pool and all the animals. When I was there, Kaley always called me Vin, but when I wasn’t around – off at training or a game or somewhere – Tans told me she referred to me as ‘Dad’. She’d say to Tans, ‘Where’s Dad tonight?’ or, ‘Is Dad playing this weekend?’ I can’t tell you how much that meant to me, and still does.
Kaley quickly became as protective of me as her mum was. And I like to think that I was her safety net too, like I was for Tans. That’s not going to change, not for a second. That’s part of me honouring her mother’s life. Kaley was everything to Tans.
Kaley loved Redbourn; we all did. At night, once she was asleep, Tans and I would lie in bed watching TV and having a cuddle, listening to the barn owl screeching in the woods. Each time I left the house to go somewhere, Tans would say, ‘Where’s my kiss?’ and I’d throw her one – I’d literally throw her a kiss and she’d catch it.
But even our love couldn’t save me that night, as the helicopters circled.
We were one of three properties on the acreage. There was our farmhouse, then another farmhouse at the bottom of the hill and a mobile home between the two.
Back then, I’d tried to help out an old homeless fella called Bill. He was 67, toothless and a drinker, and he used to hang around outside the Bell and Shears pub on the main drag in Redbourn. He wasn’t in great shape, so one evening I offered to let him live in his tent in our field – in return, his job was to walk the dogs and do other stuff around the farm.
I was a bit of a sucker for dogs (still am). I think people knew that, so quite often on Sundays, people would come by not-so-randomly to the Bell and Shears and tell me a long sob story about this dog or that dog – they were usually working animals like shepherds and spaniels and Labradors – and how they needed a home. Those big eyes (of the dogs, not the owners) would gaze up at me and bosh, I’d head home with yet another animal. Quite a few nights I’d run upstairs to where Kaley was in bed and deposit a new dog on her duvet.
‘Here’s Sally!’ I’d say one week, then the next week, ‘Here’s Taffy!’ There was Ben the Alsatian – he got nicked – and Billy, the mutt. Most of these dogs we kept outside in the kennels and Bill would feed them and look after them. Two Jack Russells lived in the house, though – a mother and son team called Tessie and Lucky.
This acquisition of animals went on until I upped my game and brought home a human, Bill. We quickly converted a normal garden shed for him so that he’d have heating and electricity – not to mention Sky TV. Then, after the shed, I bought him a beautiful, all-singing, all-dancing caravan. We put it in the pig field and Tans used to do his dinner every night. Every single night. She was up for everything, our Tans; the kindest soul you can imagine.
I was forever bringing something home to Redbourn. One Bonfire Night I brought back an entire set of fairground
rides that I’d borrowed from some Travellers, complete with carousels and hot dog stands, the lot. Bouncy castles became a regular thing too, so that all the neighbourhood kids could have fun with Kaley and Aaron.
Then there were the little business schemes I ran. I was on good money from the football, but I still liked to dabble.
The first thing I got into was TVs. I bought 150 of them at £125 a pop and then I’d sell them for two hundred. I think they were Russian rejects, Bekos, from Argos, and I kept them in the garage. You couldn’t get a mouse in there, there were so many TVs in boxes. Sadly, we found out after I sold them that none of them worked. People would bring them back and I’d replace them with a different Beko, which was also no good. I tried to take the whole lot back to the guy I’d gotten them from, but he said, ‘The rules are: bought as seen.’ I didn’t like to point out that technically that was just one rule, and honestly, he wasn’t the kind of person to argue with, so I didn’t press the point.
From broken TVs I graduated to nesting tables; I thought they’d be a lovely Christmas gift for wives and mothers and girlfriends. Who doesn’t love a set of mahogany nesting tables? On Christmas Day, however, my phone lit up like a Christmas tree, because when the lads all proudly presented their lady folk with the nesting tables, each and every one had a leg missing (the tables, not the ladies). I had some tables left over so I could at least get a few spare legs from the unused boxes, but it still wasn’t a good look.
Lost Without You: Loving and Losing Tanya Page 10