Charlie Higson appears at the Idler Festival on Saturday 11 July. Here he recounts an embarrassing ouzo-fuelled teenage memory

Halfway down the hill the driver switched off the engine. His two friends, squashed next to him on the wide front seat, laughed. Said something in Greek. Daphne translated for us.

“They say it saves gas.”

Without the engine to restrain it, the car quickly picked up speed. The men whooped as we were thrown from side to side going round the steep switchback bends. The oldest of them, Yiannis, stretched a wiry, tanned arm along the back of the seat and grinned at us.

“You like?”

We smiled back at him, eager not to show any weakness – we weren’t scared. No way. We were enjoying this, actually. It was an adventure…

These guys were a lot older than us. Men. We were just boys. Three green English schoolboys travelling in Greece … In a car that was completely out of control.

Yiannis and Daphne had got into a conversation in Greek. It was clear he didn’t speak much English. He was grinning. Cool. In charge.

In the seventies Greek girls were very protected. Kept away from the local men in almost medieval seclusion. Girls from the more relaxed European countries who came here on holiday were seen as easy prey.

But this was something altogether different. A Greek girl hitchhiking with three English boys was unheard of. Which was why Daphne pretended to be English most of the time. As well as hitching we were using buses and Daphne was careful not to speak Greek when we were on one, so she could listen to what the old women in black were saying about her, assuming she couldn’t understand them …

“Look at that foreign whore …”

“Look at how she is dressed …”

“She will go to hell …”

“She does have lovely hair, though – long and dark like a good Greek girl.”

But Yiannis and his friends had realised she was Greek as soon as they’d picked us up at the top of the hill. So she had to be “easy”, and a bunch of 16-year-old boys was no competition.

“He says we should come to his restaurant tonight,” Daphne translated again. “He will give us a free meal.”

“Yes – free,” said Yiannis, recognising the word. “You like drink? Ouzo? Yes. You like. Hahaha.”

We all knew this was a bad idea, but as teenagers with an inflated sense of our invulnerability and a very tight budget we accepted the offer. Daphne looked at us. She knew this was a bad idea as well. But at least she was tougher than us.

Daphne was a year older, smart and confident and sophisticated. We’d met her in England. She was a family friend of a Greek man, Vaz, who’d been teaching at our school on an exchange. It was the long, glorious summer between finishing O levels and starting in the sixth form, and Vaz had invited a group of us to Greece.

We divided our time between his family home in Athens and his villa on the island of Spetses. It was quite clear that he liked the company of teenage boys. He did, for instance, encourage us to wrestle in our underpants. Classically Greek. But he was harmless and we went along with things – after all, we were getting a free holiday.

Vaz came from a wealthy bohemian background, as did Daphne, who also had a family home in Athens, where we met up with her again. Her house was like something out of a European art house movie. Marble floors, photography books lying open on antique tables, huge abstract paintings everywhere … It seems extraordinary to me now that her parents were cool enough to let Daphne go off with three English boys who were escaping Vaz and his wrestling for a week to see a bit of the Peloponnese – the part of Greece that reaches down like a three-fingered hand below Athens.

We had a small tent and slept on beaches, or on top of one of the unfinished buildings that were everywhere – concrete boxes with pillars at each corner but no roof. Apparently it was only when you completed a building that you had to pay tax on it.

It was on one of these shells that we made camp that evening, having survived the helter-skelter descent into town. It stood on a rise at the edge of town among olive and pine trees with a good view of the beach and the main drag.

We stowed our gear, such as it was, and walked down to find Yiannis’s restaurant. A typical Greek taverna, away from the sea front in a less popular part of town. Sparsely furnished and with a TV on the wall showing an interminable Greek talk show.

All the men from the car were there and greeted us with mocking civility, homing in on Daphne like flies round your lunch. The first thing Yiannis did was give us each a large glass of ouzo. He added water and raised a toast, watching us with a steely stare to make sure we drank them down. His friends laughed and clapped us on the backs as Yiannis refilled our glasses. A ritual that was to continue all evening. Somewhere along the way some plates of chicken and chips arrived. We wolfed down the food and it queasily swilled about in the poisonous bilge of ouzo.

Left alone for a moment, Daphne told me that the men kept urging her to get rid of us.

“They say why am I spending time with boys when I could be with men like them. They will take me on their boat. They will show me the best clubs. But I told them, no. We are travelling together.”

I knew we had to keep going somehow. We were Daphne’s only shield. I have no idea how long we stayed there, drinking and drinking so as not to look weak. Determined to show the men that we could take all they threw at us.

There was an argument when we left. The men finally letting their aggression show. They had given us free food and drink – what were they going to get out of it?

Nothing. We crowded round Daphne and staggered back together to our hard, concrete beds.

We were awoken early by the morning sun burning down on us and I instantly knew something was wrong. My guts were telling me they’d had enough. God knows how they’d held on this long.

“Is there a public toilet in town, do you think?” I asked Daphne and she gave me a look.

“We don’t have these things in Greece.”

“Right …”

“Maybe you can try a bar, or a café?”

“Yes, maybe …”

I somehow climbed down from the platform and started walking. The row of cafés and bars along the seafront didn’t look that far away, but they might as well have been a thousand miles. My guts were knotting and squirming, as if I’d swallowed a live cat. I clenched my rectum tight, which only increased the agony. Soon every step required a deep breath and iron concentration.

The sun was merciless, heat reflecting back off the shiny road surface. Step by step I eventually made it to the beach but I knew I’d never reach a toilet in any of the bars. I couldn’t face the negotiations and was terrified I’d void myself in the middle of all the nice people enjoying coffee and pastries.

There was only one thing for it. I’d have to get to the sea.

I turned off the road and onto the sand. I felt the Greek families sitting under umbrellas staring at me, this pale foreign boy staggering past them like Frankenstein’s monster.

Halfway across the beach I knew I wasn’t going to make it. I stopped. Sweating. Gasping. One more step would kill me.

There was nothing for it.

I let go …

The relief was immediate. Blissful. No more pain. The worst thing that could happen had happened. And it wasn’t so bad after all.

Thank God I was wearing jeans. If I’d been wearing shorts my shame would have been visible to everyone on the beach. But teenage boys didn’t wear short in the seventies.

So I carried on walking towards the sparking Mediterranean. And, with every step, a fresh gout of liquid death was expelled. My eyes were fixed ahead. I didn’t look to either side, I didn’t look back, but I could imagine a livid snail’s trail of sewage spooling out behind me.

I got to the shallows and kept going. Who cares what the locals thought? I was walking fully clothed into the sea – what of it? I went out until I was up to my neck – as far from the sunbathers as possible. Then I turned and looked back to make sure there was no one nearby, and pulled down my trousers to wash out the rest of the filth.

I stayed there a long time, waiting for the oil slick around me to disperse. Then I fixed my clothes and returned to the beach. I tried to put on a jaunty expression that said – “Ah, very refreshing” – and got out of there as fast as I could.

Nothing was said back at the unfinished house, but I think they all knew what must have happened, particularly as I spent the rest of the morning throwing up.

My last memory of the town was waiting at the bus stop with some families. Them standing in the shade, me crouching in the dust watching my spew run down the road past their feet.

It was years before I could even smell ouzo again without gagging. Were we men for drinking so much? If we’d been braver and stronger we’d have stopped before it was too late and refused anything more. But at least Daphne had made her choice – to stay with the boys and not go off with the men. And she can’t have been totally disgusted with me because a few nights later in the hot little tent on an isolated beach she helped me become a man.

But that’s another story.

This story is published with permission of Friends on the Shelf magazine in whose second issue it appeared. Click here for more details.

Charlie Higson will be in conversation with Tom Hodgkinson at the Idler Festival (Friday 10–Sunday 12 July). Idler Festival details here.

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