Mr Tyro

By Peter Cameron


The sun shone down.

Not a speck of dust stirred in the still air.

Nothing moved inside the little shop, although the shelves were piled high with muddled things.

Solid gold dishes balanced on glass paperweights, carved doves brooded in nests of shells, old coins and painted pots jostled faded pictures in dingy frames.


Tyrannosaurus dozed.

Or, rather, half dozed. He didn't move, didn't flicker an eyelid, scarcely even breathed, but his eyes were open.

The sunlight streamed in at the small dusty window and spilt over the eight-day clocks and military medals, and every detail was reflected in Tyrannosaurus' eyes.


Tyrannosaurus, who owned the shop, never tidied it up. But he knew just where everything was.

If you went in and asked for a ring with blue stones to fit an Iguanadon's thumb, or a picture of sunrise over the Tethys Sea, or an old-fashioned toy soldier Antrodemus, he would reach up to the top shelf, or under the counter, or in a drawer, and take out exactly what you wanted.


A sudden whirring broke the stillness, as a grandfather clock prepared to chime.

When it was ready, it boomed out seven strokes of its deep bell.

Before the sound of the last strike had faded, a smaller clock's musical tinkle had begun. But this clock disagreed with the crusty grandfather, and insisted that it was eleven o'clock.


It was remarkable that Tyrannosaurus owned an antique shop.

His father had been a butcher, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather, and all his ancestors for many generations had been butchers. But he had left the family business. Now he spent his days sitting in the silent shop.

He didn't have many customers in the shop.


But suddenly the door opened, setting the windchime which hung over it frantically jingling and jangling, as if a storm had blown up out of the clear still afternoon.

It was no storm, however, that swept into the shop.

Picking up her tail daintily, in came Heterodontosaurus.


Heterodontosaurus, or Hetty as she was known to her friends, was young and pretty. And bright green.

The shop was so small and crowded that Hetty could scarcely move without knocking down a china vase or an umbrella stand. And Hetty was the sort of dinosaur who couldn't keep still for a moment.


"Oh Mr Tyro", she said, "please come quickly!"

Tyrannosaurus didn't really have any friends; he kept himself to himself. But his acquaintances all called him Tyro, since his real name was so long. The younger dinosaurs treated him with more respect, and always addressed him as Mr Tyro.


Behind his back, they called him Mr Tyrant. But he wasn't really a tyrant.

Sometimes he was a bit fierce with his customers, though he had never actually eaten any of them. He wanted to be kind, but he didn't know how to make friends. And most animals were scared of him, anyway.


Hetty went on, out of breath, "It's Three-Horn. He's stuck. You must come, please do, to help unstick him".

She waved her tail around without thinking, and knocked over an oil painting of Mr Tyro's famous ancestor Tyrannosaurus Rex the Second. It was all Mr Tyro could do to stop himself snapping at her.

Fortunately, nothing was broken.


Tyrannosaurus Rex the Second had been one of the few members of Mr Tyro's family who hadn't followed a butcher's trade. He had been brought up in a butcher's shop, but had left home when he grew up and gone off to seek his fortune. After many adventures, which we can't tell here, he became King of Gondwanaland.
"Oh, won't you come?" Hetty begged.

She was picking up the picture as she spoke. That girl was never happy unless she was doing two things at once. Mr Tyro was afraid that, if he didn't come, she'd start dusting the shelves, or tidying the shop, just for something to do.

"Oh, all right, I'm coming", he growled.


Hetty led the way, running and skipping along, sometimes stopping to pick up a piece of rubbish, or to wipe the dust off a street sign. Behind he lumbered Mr Tyro, with his slow steady tread.

His feet kicked up clouds of dust from the street. Most of it settled back on the street signs, but Hetty didn't notice.


Down the street they went, around the corner, around another corner, along the edge of the swamp where the Iguanadons lived, across a bridge, up a hill, and down the other side.

And then he saw a crowd of dinosaurs, all staring at something. Mr Tyro stopped and stared too, at the most amazing sight.


There, under a tall pine tree just off the road, was an enormous white thing, nearly as tall as Mr Tyro himself. It was round but not perfectly round, smooth but not shiny.

And there, with his horns firmly stuck into the giant white thing, was Three-Horn, the Triceratops. He was stuck fast.


The other dinosaurs were milling around, all talking at once, trying to decide what to do.

A young Hypsilophodon was climbing up the white thing, looking for a way in. A huge Brontosaurus was bumping it with his back, trying to knock it over, until he knocked Hypsilophodon off.

Corythosaurus stood and scratched his crest.


When Hetty and Mr Tyro arrived, everyone started telling them what had happened. Hetty joined in at the top of her voice. The noise was too much for Mr Tyro, who, after all, had just come from a quiet half-doze in his antique shop.

"One at a time, please," he said. His voice sounded like the creaking door of his shop.


An old Styracosaurus called Grandmother Spikey came up. She was a distant relative of Three-Horn, and was a born (or hatched) organiser. She was never happier than on days like this, when someone was in a fix, and she could organise everybody to get him out of it.

She had already told the story to every new arrival.


It seemed that Three-Horn had been practising swinging his heavy horned head, knocking down bushes and tree-stumps. He had charged out from a clump of trees, and had seen the Thing too late to stop. He had crashed into it, his horns had sunk in and stuck.

And that was that.


The dinosaurs had argued about what the Thing might be, until an Ornithomimus called Flit had happened along. Flit had looked at it with his head first on one side, then on the other, and then had nibbled a little bit.

"It's a kind of mushroom," said Flit.

But none of the others liked raw mushroom.


They might have nibbled it away and freed Three-Horn that way, but they didn't like the taste! Now, if it had been cooked, that would have been different.

When Mr Tyro had given up the life of a butcher, he found that he didn't really like eating meat any more. Nowdays, he ate a lot of mushrooms. But always fried.


What a waste, a huge mushroom, much too big to cook. And if they did light a fire under it, they would cook Three-Horn instead.

But Mr Tyro was hungry. From his days in the butcher's shop, he remembered cutting up huge carcases into small pieces of meat that could easily be cooked and eaten.

And that reminded him of something else . . .


In his antique shop, among the cycad-wood chests and the trilobite-shell combs and all the rest of the junk, he had a set of old butcher's tools that had belonged to his great-grandfather. There were axes, cleavers, saws, knives, scales, and even an old-fashioned cash register.

"I have an idea," he said to Grandmother Spikey.


He told her what she had in mind. Before he had finished speaking, she had begun organising. She issued orders, she asked for advice and then ignored it, she wrote out little lists.

Soon, almost everyone was bustling about doing something, except of course poor Three-Horn, who was still stuck fast, and Mr Tyro, who was too sleepy.


Two Trachodons had been sent off with the key to Mr Tyro's shop. They had been told to look in the second drawer on the left at the back of the shop, under the pile of Early Jurassic firescreens, to find the butcher's tools and bring them back.

"And don't break anything," said Mr Tyro, not too hopefully.


Mrs Brachiosaurus was told to go home and bring along her biggest frying pans. Her five children, Becky-o, Macky-o, Monty-o, Miffy-o, and Sam, went with her to help carry them.

All the others went into the forest to collect firewood, which they piled up between two large boulders.


When the Trachodons came back, groaning under the heavy load, Mr Tyro said grumpily, "And how many things did you knock down?", but he took the box and opened it.

First, he pulled out a blue-and-white striped apron. He put it on, and Grandmother Spikey tied the strings behind his back.


Then he picked up an enormous knife, with edges like a saw. It was white, and viciously sharp.

"My great-grandfather's front tooth," said Mr Tyro to himself. The other dinosaurs shivered, especially Brontosaurus, who would have made a lot of rump steaks for Mr Tyro's ancestor.


Mr Tyro stepped up to the white mushroom. Then he started work. He cut and sawed. He hacked pieces off, trimmed them, and turned them into mushroom steaks. All the time, he was cutting closer to where Three-Horn was stuck.

Willing hands carried the steaks away to Mrs Brachiosaurus, who had lit the fire and was now sizzling them in her enormous frying-pans.


Then, with a delicate flourish of the knife, Mr Tyro slit the mushroom just beside Three-Horn's horns. The Triceratops heaved and strained, and then with a jolt he was free!

A cheer went up from all the dinosaurs. It echoed around the hills and forests and over the swamp.

But Mr Tyro went on cutting, until there was enough mushroom steak for everyone.


Mrs Brachiosaurus went on cooking, and Becky-o, Macky-o, Monty-o and Miffy-o handed round the delicious fried mushroom steaks to everyone.

Sam sat in a corner and tucked into a piece he had taken from the pan while his mother wasn't looking.

Everyone ate and ate. Mr Tyro had the biggest piece of all, as he was the hungriest.


When they had all eaten so much that they couldn't manage another piece, Grandmother Spikey waved her spikes for attention.

"On behalf of my cousin Three-Horn, and of everybody here, and of course myself too, I would like to propose that we give three cheers for our dear friend Mr Tyrannosaurus."

The cheers were loud and long.


Mr Tyro sat there with his eyes open, not moving. But two big tears crept out of his eyes and down his long snout, and dropped into the dust.

Even though he loved his antique shop better than anything else in the world, he could see now that the butcher's trade has its uses; and he knew that he had friends.


Copyright Peter Cameron, sometime in the 1980s