Village Shepherd

One day, James Butler missed his stop. It was very unusual, for James Butler was a person of habit who always kept strictly to the same timetable. So much so, that the milkman, the postman and the paperboy all set their time by him. "There he goes," they'd mutter as they watched him stride towards the station, "we must be on time today."

The journey into London took three quarters of an hour, just long enough for James Butler to read his newspaper from cover to cover, fold it into a convenient oblong, take out his Parker biro (a birthday present from his aunt), and complete exactly half the crossword puzzle.

But on this particular day, something odd happened which upset James Butler's routine and caused him to miss his stop. An elderly woman sat next to him on the train, and started to talk to him. It was very annoying. James wanted to read his paper, but he'd no sooner turned to the sport on the back page (he always started from the back) when the woman said, "Good morning."

James was astonished. He'd caught the same train for fifteen years, and nobody ever spoke. Like him, they all disappeared behind their newspapers or immediately fished out their irritating mobile phones or opened up their infuriating laptop computers. Politeness demanded that James reply, but being anxious to stop any conversation before it started, he merely grunted and hunched himself more firmly into his own corner.

Unfortunately the woman took that as a signal to launch into an immediate dialogue, and try as he would to discourage her, James was eventually forced to lower his newspaper and respond. She was a strange woman, restless and anxious. But as she began to reveal her entire life story to him, James found himself reluctantly listening. As she talked on, telling him about her childhood some eighty years ago in a remote part of Africa, James became aware of a growing fascination.

She spoke with such love about the people she'd known as a child, and tears came into her eyes as she compared the past to the present plight of those people living in abject hunger and with the threat of violence always near.

James had seen awful pictures on the television news of starving people and had always felt some sympathy for them. He'd even occasionally sent some money for them. But it had never really struck him before that they were real people with homes and families and friends. It had always felt a bit like a television documentary, which kept him up-to-date with the news but didn't actually touch him.

Now he noticed a strange lurching in his heart as the woman spoke.

It was just after that, that he came to himself and realised he'd missed his stop. In a sudden panic he leapt to his feet, excused himself briefly and jumped off the train at the next station. He turned left out of the station and began to walk briskly back in the direction of his office, checking his watch and realising that he'd probably be late for the first time ever.

He also realised that for some inexplicable reason, he didn't care. But it was when he passed a poster showing a gaunt, African woman holding a tiny, undernourished child and staring out at him with beseeching eyes, that he felt his heart leap within him. He peered closely at the poster, and noted the address shown. Then he calmly walked back to the station, boarded a train and made his way to the address.

James Butler never returned to his office in London. He went out to Africa and studied the conditions for himself, and then he returned to England and devoted his life to raising money to help disadvantaged people. His routine disappeared, he faced danger, he lost touch with all his habitual friends, and he had no money for himself, but for the first time ever, he felt gloriously free and fully alive in a completely new and exciting way.

He never saw the old lady again, but he never forgot her, either.