Published: 01 July 2010
by GERALD ISAAMAN

IT'S the conscience,” cries Nina. “It’s the fact that everywhere you turn people are lying, bending the truth, cheating – and I hate it. But I can’t complain if I also do it!”

Lying is undoubtedly  in fashion, whether it be politicians, bankers, priests, so-called celebrities and others who subsequently get caught out in sleazy scandal. So Mavis Cheek, yet again, is on the mark with her fascinating tale of infidelity and deception amid the joys of Venice.

And it was a Tony Blair speech about Iraq some years ago that sparked the idea for her new novel. A friend was ranting about the then prime minister’s false perceptions about the illicit war when the phone went and he was invited to a dinner party.

Without hesitating a second, he told a lie and turned down the invitation – because he didn’t actually like the person. “The moment just stayed with me, the whole idea that one can switch from being infuriated with a politician and then switch into lying yourself so brilliantly,” Mavis explains.

Now we have her version in the sophisticated story of Nina who falls into the same shameless trap that now apparently engulfs us all. Indeed, admirers of Truth to Tell have been sending her emails declaring: “I loved your novel – and that’s the truth,” the last word  deliberately underlined to prove it isn’t schmooze.

“It seems to have caught a nerve in people,” admits Mavis. “There is now undoubtedly a preponderance in lying and it goes with the whole celebrity thing. The fact is that tabloid newspapers make things up. If they don’t know the answer then…

“I don’t know if it is a failure of morality, but I do know there is a failure of integrity. People doing the honourable thing doesn’t happen any more. Politicians simply don’t resign – and they aren’t expected to – when there is a scandal.”

She recalls the Profumo affair over call girl Christine Keeler and adds: “We probably lost an extremely good and valuable MP because he fell on his sword. There are these silly and unthinking people who do believe everything – sexuality – should be up for grabs.”

Equally, she refers to President Clinton’s claim  “I did not have sexual relations with that woman”, and his wife  Hillary, now the American Secretary of State, insisting she has forgiven him. “That was probably a lie, though a much quieter lie,” she points out. “And they are both there still as powerful people in the political world.”

Perhaps, like the Victorians, she believes white lies are part of our social cement and not necessarily wicked, though she suspects men are better than women at lying, even when today’s mantra is total transparency.

Dorothy Rowe, an eminent psychologist, claims our lives are structures of deceit, most people lying to avoid hurting the feelings of others. But we also do it to protect ourselves from insecurity, the fear of rejection, the most destructive kind of lies being fantasies of self-delusion.

Mavis is not so sure on the latter. “I don’t think the bankers were deluding themselves – they were just trying to cover their backs,” she protests. “They knew exactly what they were doing.”

Yet it is the fantasy of fiction that is obviously  at the heart of Mavis’s success as the author of 13 sharp and witty novels that women, in particular, cherish. It is the sanguine wisdom from life’s hard shocks and her rare ability to make us laugh that provides the antidote to our awful ordinariness.

One reason why  Venice provides part of the baroque backdrop for Truth to Tell is because she sees it, after many visits, as a city of romantic subterfuge, mists and mysteries, where she could indulge in her own passion for its artistic delights. 

You will find it in her intimate prose as she describes Venice’s architectural glories, its claustrophobic alleys, kissing waiters and her ability, as one example, to depict the oddities of tourists’ clothes.

“Seldom does any category of human being look sensible and pleasing in a baseball cap,” she writes. “It says something about the wearer but I’m not sure what. Avoid me at all costs, perhaps?”

She can be soft and serious about her subjects, and her own life too, revealing that her agent was hardly ecstatic when she announced she was writing a morality tale. 

“I never tell a lie,” she says with a smile, almost placing a hand on her heart. “That’s the way I like to see it as, on the whole, I believe the best of the world. I’m still one of those optimistic people, never inclined to tell nasty lies or do nasty things.” She pauses, then adds succinctly: “Occasionally, when driven, the axe will come out and the claws will appear.”

Truth to tell, that’s how it is. That’s the cheek of it – and all the better for it.

• Truth to Tell. By Mavis Cheek. Hutchinson £11.99