Once Upon a Time . . .

I was sitting in a British pub called Ye Olde King’s Head the day after Diana died, looking and listening.

It was about 7 o’clock on an evening as warm and sweet as honey in tea, and the place was jammed.

The door of the restaurant was open, allowing a soft breeze to drift in. The pub is in Santa Monica, a couple of blocks from the ocean, where fog was gathering, ready to damp the heat.

In the restaurant part of the building, conversation was muted, but every once in a while you could hear shouts from the adjoining bar where groups of men played darts. Nondescript music droned in the background.

I was there, as I said, looking and listening, halfway wondering if I should write about the death of the princess, her boyfriend and the driver.

I’d pretty much given up on the idea as I drove to the place. Almost every radio station I listened to was quoting John Gordon, owner of the King’s Head, and talking about the sadness of the people there.

As usual, I had decided too late to pursue the obvious, proving to myself once more that the obvious probably isn’t the best way to go because everybody else always gets there first.

I wandered through the restaurant anyhow and later sat sipping a martini and staring at a steak and kidney pie. I’m not supposed to eat steak and I hate kidney, but it’s like a national dish in the UK and ordering it was my link to a nation in mourning.

It was as I was about ready to try it, poking at the thing like I thought it might get up and run, that I heard a snatch of conversation across the room. A man was telling a little girl, “There are no fairy tales anymore.”

The phrase hit me like a burst of music.

*

They were sitting at a table in a corner near the door. There was the man, a woman, a small boy and that little girl. She was about 7 and looked as though she might cry.

When the man, presumably her father, made the comment I wanted to rush over and ask questions, but I didn’t. All the interviewing of all the sad people had already been done, and anyhow I already had what I needed.

There are no fairy tales anymore.

Proof of that, I guess, is contained in the way Diana died. In the first place, princesses aren’t even supposed to die but to live happily ever after in an eternal kingdom of the imagination, always young and always beautiful.

The messiness, the horror, of Di’s last moments shattered that illusion in an explosion of steel, smashing and crushing a fairy tale princess in an automotive carriage.

It was as though all the beautiful young women of all the fairy tales ever written perished with her. Snow White never recovered. Cinderella was trampled by her own horses. The Beast killed the Beauty in a rage.

Diana’s death was all the more tragic because her new romance with Dodi Fayed had assumed mythic proportions. The princess was in love with a rich and handsome “prince” and her whole being was alive with that glory.

Happily ever after waited just around the bend . . . or somewhere on the other end of an unlit tunnel in a city meant for lovers.

*

Reality has a way of darkening the most beautiful of human fantasies, and it darkened this one under a funeral shroud.

As if Diana’s death alone weren’t enough, the manner in which she died contributes to the horror. Was she chased into eternity by the paparazzi? Was she thrust into oblivion by a drinking driver?

The whole question of tabloid journalism, both print and electronic, has come under deep scrutiny because, it is said, the photographers were still taking pictures as Diana and two others lay dying.

And now, we are told, those pictures are for sale. The world reacts in dismay to the very idea . . . but I say why not?

Isn’t that why we buy those newspapers? Isn’t that why we watch the kinds of shows that trade on violence? Isn’t that what circulation wars are all about? Isn’t that why sweeps week was born?

We shoot each other down on the streets, throw living babies into dumpsters, settle arguments with gunfire, violate the public trust in high office and then plead innocent to it all in a court of cultural atonement.

Our heroes are off shooting up somewhere or snorting coke, too stoned to know whether or not being heroic even matters anymore.

So, hell, use the last photographs and the last footage of our fairy tale princess. It will only emphasize what the father told his daughter that warm summer night and what we all knew anyhow.

Once upon a time, the story will go, there lived a beautiful princess, but she was pursued by money-lusting demons and driven by a boozing coachman, and now she’s gone, and no one will live happily ever after anymore.

Al Martinez can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com