One Chance (17 page)

“I'm still a virgin!” I said.

The whole bar seemed to go quiet, as if everyone in the pub had heard what I'd said.

“You don't admit to things like that!” one of the group said.

I shrugged my shoulders. I didn't see the point in lying about it; there was nothing to gain. It was just bragging rights. My lack of social skills was showing again, but I genuinely saw no reason to feel ashamed. I was what I was. I'd got by thus far, not measuring myself by other people's standards.

I remained hopeless around girls. From time to time I was approached, but I wasn't able to recognise the signs of a girl liking me, and so I didn't respond in any way, ignoring their advances. If I was given a girl's number by one of the guys in the group, I would just assume they were winding me up. After all, who would be interested in me?

As I reached the end of my twenties, my luck with girls slowly started to change. In between the trips to Barcelona and Rimini, I took part in Bath Spa University's production of Mozart's
Magic Flute
, playing the role of Monostatos.

The performances went well, and my strength surprised two burly rugby players who were to drag me offstage as part of the action. Things got even better for me when it came to the last-night party. I got chatting to a slim, pretty girl named Elizabeth, one of the viola players in the orchestra. She was quite shy, like me, and we hit it off very well. We chatted, and she told me she liked my eyes. We arranged to meet a few days later, and it soon became clear that I would be cycling to Bath even more.

Right from the start my father was unhappy about our
relationship, even though he'd never met Liz. I would stay at her place, and we went together to Portsmouth to see my brother John and his then long-term girlfriend. However, our relationship wasn't meant to be, and after a few months we split up. That was fine by Dad; he seemed to think I should be married to my music. In fact, he insisted that it might be better if I stayed single forever, as my singing was more important.

My father and I also differed on other issues. He didn't believe in sex before marriage and expected me to follow his example. Mum always tried to stay out of arguments with Dad, as he tended to be stubborn. I firmly believed that sex belonged within a loving relationship, as an expression of love. My opinion was that a marriage doesn't start with a marriage ceremony. The wedding ceremony is simply the public formalising of the relationship. I was certainly waiting for the right person, but not necessarily for marriage. My father and I disagreed on this, which sometimes led to heated arguments.

It felt as if my father feared that meeting someone would lead me to give up my singing. As much as singing meant to me, I wasn't going to be forced into choosing between that and the love of my life. Like anyone else, I wanted to be loved and held by someone who would accept me for who I was; to be someone's “forever” person. Why should I have to choose between music and love? And as for the singing, it was hard enough just trying to succeed for myself. I didn't want to have to live my father's dreams as well.

When I made the decision to stay on in Rimini, Dad told me he feared I would not return; that I would meet an Italian girl and have a “few bambini.” The fact that I had been enjoying my
time there must have been obvious, and this wasn't just about the music. I'd made friends with a couple of local Italian girls and I found one of them, Fulvia, attractive. She was pretty, pleasant, and, as I was to discover, extremely perceptive.

I performed one of my favourite duets with Fulvia, “O Soave Fanciulla” from
La Bohème
. During one of our performances at a local spa hotel, we were waiting for our stage time, close to the hotel's swimming pool. Being humorous in a foreign language can be a challenge, but I decided to give it a go. I adapted some of the words from “O Soave Fanciulla,” offering my hand and singing to her:

“
Dammi'll braccio, mia piscina
. . .”

The original word,
piccina
, means “sweetheart”;
piscina
means “swimming pool.” To my delight, Fulvia laughed. I could sense that she liked me, but I wasn't sure in what way or how much. My normal cowardly self seized on my uncertainty with the language, and I never made my move. I wanted a relationship with her, but I was worried about how that would work.

In my third month in Italy, Fulvia and I found ourselves being put through our paces. Svetlana, as usual, was trying to make us move and lose our inhibitions. She asked the group to walk round and look into each other's eyes. I found myself face to face with Fulvia. As she looked into my eyes and I into hers, she broke down in tears. I was confused; I'd said nothing. Svetlana stopped the group and we sat in a circle. She asked Fulvia what she had seen.

Fulvia answered in Italian:

“Guardai il suo viso e nei suoi occhi e ho visto la tristezza non ho mai visto prima. Era profondo e non ho potuto andare oltre di esso.”

By this point, my Italian was good enough that I understood with a sinking heart what she was saying:

“I looked at his face and into his eyes and saw a sadness that I had never seen before. It was deep, and I could not get past it.”

I knew what she had seen. The load I carried was never far away, but I had never been able to talk about it. In that small room, in a language that wasn't my own, I tried to explain what I had been through. I found myself talking to the whole group about the bullying and the abuse. Then both Fulvia and I cried.

Back in Bristol, I came up with a way of getting around my struggles in chatting up women: I started talking with them on the Internet. I saw chatting on the net as a modern way of old-fashioned dating. Online, I was able to be a little less nervous and actually demonstrate a sense of humour. The challenge was always going to come when I met the unsuspecting person.

I got chatting to a couple of women from different parts of the world, including a woman from South Africa. For a while, I chatted with an Australian from Melbourne called Chrissie, but when we met there wasn't the chemistry we were hoping for. I didn't give up, though, and continued to get to know people. Then in January 2001, I started chatting with a twenty-year-old girl from South Wales.

I was working nights at Tesco at the time. I would get home around seven most mornings, have some breakfast, and lounge around in front of the computer doing council casework and chatting on the net. After a few days, there was only one woman I was chatting with: Julz.

It helped me get through the long work night, knowing that I would chat with her before she went to work. After a couple of weeks of this, we exchanged phone numbers and started to talk on the phone. I offered to send a photograph of myself and Julz said that was fine, although she didn't feel comfortable sending one of her own.

We were getting on well, and so we agreed to meet. I still remember the date clearly: 2 February 2001, and the meeting-up point: Swansea Railway Station. Julz had a distinct advantage over me in that she had my photograph, but I still didn't know what she looked like. She could very easily have run away and I would never have known any different. I was thirty, ten years older than Julz, and concerned that she might think the age gap would be a problem.

“I'll be wearing a cream woollen jumper,” was all she would tell me.

It was 10:08 a.m. My train from Bristol had just arrived and as I stepped down onto the platform, I saw her: a pretty girl with long blonde hair in a cream-white jumper. The moment I saw Julz, I knew she was going to be special. I was also hugely relieved that she had seen me and hadn't decided to do a runner! We kissed each other lightly on the cheek and discussed what we were going to do for the day.

“How about ten-pin bowling?” Julz suggested.

I agreed. I can be way too competitive sometimes, and it can be a struggle for me to play just for fun, but on this occasion I just about managed it.

After we finished, we went for a short stroll round Swansea. I found myself wanting to hold Julz's hand and wondering how
to go about it. What would happen if she said no? If she rejected my hand, then the chances were that I wouldn't try again. I took the plunge and was very relieved when she did in fact hold my hand. We walked onto the seafront and wandered round Mumbles Pier. We sat there together, looking out to sea and eating fish and chips.

Julz and I spent a lot of time together that day, chatting and, yes, kissing and cuddling. It was obvious to me that I had met someone very special, and I wanted to see her again. I was also very aware of my own past and the incident with Fulvia in Rimini. Rather than waiting to tell Julz about what had happened, I told her everything there and then. I knew I was taking a big risk, but in my heart I knew that she was special.

Julz took the information in her stride. I was hugely relieved; I knew that I fell in love very easily, and hadn't wanted the risk of my insecurity ruining things later on. At the end of the date, she dropped me back at Swansea station for my train back to Bristol. I was about to spend some time in the Lake District, and so we agreed to keep in touch via phone and the Internet while I was there. Normally I enjoyed being in the Lake District, but this time all I wanted was to see Julz again.

The first opportunity was the following Sunday. I had been cast in the title role of the Bath Opera production of
Don Carlos
, and although I had a rehearsal in the morning, I would be free from about two in the afternoon. Julz came down to Bath and quickly became a permanent feature at our Sunday morning principal rehearsals. As we got to know each other better, we started to spend the Saturday night together in a hotel and then drive to the rehearsal on the Sunday. It wasn't long before the
strains of “O Don Fatale” and other arias were stuck in Julz's head, and she would curse me while she hummed them at work.

The fact that we were spending Saturday nights together meant that I had more arguments with dad. He didn't approve, but I didn't much care. I was falling in love with Julz, and I wanted to spend as much time as I could with her. Dad had two difficulties with the situation: he didn't approve of sex before marriage, and he felt sure that going out with Julz would lead to my giving up singing. The fact that Julz was attending rehearsals seemed completely lost on him. Again, he was suggesting I had to make a choice between singing and love. But I didn't see it that way.

The Don Carlos role was the first lead part I had played, and I enjoyed every minute of it. There was a lot of great music in the opera, and lots of singing for me: an aria plus three huge duets. I was pleased to receive my first critic's review—“high octane passion from Paul Potts in the title role”—and to know that Julz was in the audience, proudly watching on.

Bath Opera had given me the part largely because of the progress I had made in Italy, and I was keen to return to improve further. This time, however, I wouldn't be going on my own. I decided to go for six weeks, again having to take a career break in order to do so, and asked Julz to join me in Rimini for a week, coinciding with her birthday.

Julz had never flown by herself before, and she has never let me forget that for this first solo flight I had booked her on a nondirect flight: she had to fly from Heathrow to Frankfurt and then onwards to Bologna where I would meet her. Unfortunately, the first part of her journey to Frankfurt was delayed and she
missed her onward flight. Waiting for her and getting worried, I ended up going to the Lufthansa office in Bologna, which thankfully got hold of Julz, who was in the Lufthansa office in Frankfurt. I was keeping in touch with Julz's dad at the same time and was able to tell him what was going on. Eventually a very tired and stressed Julz arrived at Bologna, and we made our way to Bologna station for the ninety-minute journey to Rimini. This time I remembered to validate the tickets!

Julz arrived just in time for the first concert of the session. Annoyingly for her, and purely coincidentally, three of the arias featured were from
Don Carlo
. Having spent much of the year watching the rehearsals, Julz knew the opera well, so much so that while the arias were being sung in Italian, she was mouthing back the words in English.

One of the attractions of the course that year was that it now included master classes with three very important singers: Katia Ricciarelli, Wilma Vernocchi, and Luciano Pavarotti. For the Pavarotti master class, there were to be auditions to decide who would get to sing for him. In order to prepare for mine, I worked with a principal bass from Verona Arena, Alessandro Calamai.

Julz came with me to my lesson, and Alessandro asked her to sing a song she knew. Hearing her speak, he felt that she had a good singing voice. She blushed a little and sung a little of “Somewhere” from
West Side Story
. Julz still states that she cannot sing, but both I and Alessandro disagreed! The lessons went well, as did the audition for the Pavarotti master class: I was delighted to discover that I was one of those selected.

Julz's birthday came, and we had dinner together in the main square in Rimini, Piazza de Tre Martiri. It was her twenty-first
birthday, and I bought her a necklace with a small diamond. We decided we would tease her family, as Tara, her elder sister, had been betting that we were going to get engaged. Julz told her I had given her a diamond and left her to wonder for a few days before putting her out of her misery. It was a wonderful evening, and I knew I would be sad when the time came for her to return to Wales.